top of page

The Math Behind The Most Addictive Songs

  • Anastasia Susanto
  • May 9
  • 3 min read

Updated: Jul 18

You’re  in an exam. The clock shows ten minutes left, you haven’t finished a full page of questions, and your hand is almost broken. All you’re trying to do is remember that one slide you read the night before, yet all your dusty brain can muster is the melody to the pesky song you heardon the car ride to school. Why does this happen?


Earworms are as common as colds. They sneak up on you and worm their way into your brain when you least expect it. It may not even be a song you like, yet your head is a broken record playing it again and again. Worst of all, they never leave your head, even if you try your absolute hardest to rid yourself of it. But if you take a second to examine the problem further, you might end up with a lot of unanswered questions. What makes some songs more addictive or catchy than others? Is there something in our brain that latches onto certain elements in a song? If so, what are they? 


In short, there’s only one answer to these questions: Math.


Behind the most catchy, addictive tunes lay a hidden code of math under the surface. There are quite a few elements of math involved in a song’s conception, all intertwining and weaving together to create a melody so irresistibly memorable. Dr. Daniel Mullensiefen, a psychologist at the University of London, said: “Every musical hit is reliant on maths, science, engineering, and technology”. Arguably one of the most important of which is repetition. A short, snappy hook and three repeats are all it takes to get a melody to stick, even if the hook itself is bad (Barsom, 2006). Looking at this through a statistical lens, it makes sense. From presidential campaigns (Ex. “We’re not going back!”) to fast food commercials (Ex. “I’m loving it”), mottos or hooks are essential. Excessive repetition minimizes the work it takes for your brain to process and familiarize it, says Knuth (1984). 


Beyond simple repetition, exceptional composers strive to integrate mathematical structures into the very marrow of their work. A group of researchers, led by physicist Suman Kulkarni of the University of Pennsylvania, made use of information entropy to dissect Johann Sebastian Bach’s compositions. What they found is that his music is so structured that it is incredibly, mathematically beautiful when presented as a network of nodes to calculate information entropy (Cutts, 2024). Information entropy is a mathematical method of measuring how much information is in a given event, meaning when laid out, Bach’s pieces are dense and rich with musical information. 


The last crucial elements are rhythm structures and syncopation, meaning to alter the accents and/or stresses in a piece of music in an irregular manner, creating an ‘off-beat’ feel. A “tresillo” rhythm - a pair of dotted quarter notes followed by a quarter note - is so deeply ingrained into the composition of most modern pop songs, and songs from even before now. A study analyzing Billboard Top 20 songs over two decades found that rhythmic predictability, balanced with unexpected variations (such as a three-note beat when in place of a two-note time span), contributes to a song’s catchiness (Gómez et al., 2021).


In conclusion, a vast expanse of different aspects of math lend a helping hand in creating a song so catchy and memorable, you will never be able to forget it. The next time you unwittingly get a song stuck in your head, try to dissect exactly why and how you can’t seem to get it out. Maybe you’ll find the math that lurks just beneath the surface. 


Citations



  • Gómez, E., Thul, E., & Collins, N. (2021). Rhythmic Predictability and Musical Preference. ArXiv.(Accesed: 12 March 2025)



  • Müllensiefen, D., & Halpern, A. R. (2014). The Role of Memory and Expectation in Musical Preference. Psychomusicology.(Accesed: 11 March 2025)



























 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page