Researchers Found That “Every Breath You Take” Is The Most Popular Type Of Song
The Police - Stewart Copeland, Sting And Andy Summers, The Gardens Club, Kensington, London, The Police - Stewart Copeland, Sting And Andy Summers, The Gardens Club, Kensington, London (Photo by Brian Rasic/Getty Images)
Are You Even Surprised?
We all know The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” is one creepy song, and yet, we still cannot stop listening to it. Even as its meaning was revealed, people continued putting them on repeat or even singing along. Why has it remained a favorite? How did it manage to stand the test of time? What did Sting do to put us under his spell?
As it turned out, there’s a method to the madness.
The Royal Society recently a research paper on “Diurnal fluctuations in musical preference” in collaboration with researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark. The researchers analyzed streaming data for almost 4 million songs on Spotify. This was to determine our listening pattern over a 24-hour period.
“We found that we could categorize it into five distinct time blocks throughout the day,” lead researcher Ole Adrian Heggli said.
The time blocks he mentioned were morning, afternoon, evening, night, and late night/early morning.
In the morning, listeners preferred slow but energetic songs like Robbie Williams’ “Supreme”. In the afternoon, louder and faster songs like Rihanna’s “Only Girl (In The World)” dominated. In the evening, people gravitated towards danceable music.
And the song that transverses these time blocks? The Police’s “Every Breath You Take.”
“It’s a very in-the-middle type of song,” Heggli explained. “It’s a medium tempo. It’s a bit groovy, but not too much groovy. It doesn’t have any loud surprises. And it’s all over just a very pleasant, perhaps even a bit bland song.”
Well, that explains it.
