Ever had a song just...lodge itself in your brain? You're not alone! That's an earworm, and science has figured out why they happen. Researchers at the University of St Andrews developed a formula ...

A personal experiment with the artificial intelligence music platform Suno’s latest model echoes a new preprint study. Most listeners can’t tell AI music from the real thing, but emotional resonance s ...

Can't get the Spice Girl's "Wannabe" out of your head 18 years later? You're not alone, a new study says. The research, out of the University of Amsterdam, is founded on the basis that all catchy ...

The saying is that "taste is subjective," and that is certainly true when it comes to music—and taste is so fickle. For example, when Stone Temple Pilots first appeared on the scene in the 1990s, ...

Along with being a musician, one iconic band's lead singer is also a scientist, which led him to a miraculous day in the lab when the idea for a hit song emerged. Truly, a band never knows when the ...

Exploring comments made by The White Stripes singer Jack White about the success of the band's song 'Seven Nation Army' and why it became a hit.

When it comes to what makes one song "better" than another, definitive judgments can be hard to come by. After all, personal preference weighs heavily in what makes one melody more appealing than ...

A song description like the “catchiest of all time” is always going to have a bit of hyperbole behind it, but a 1977 signature song by Queen is one notable exception. From television and film to ...

Dr. Grierson of Goldsmiths University, London, once conducted a study to reveal the 50 most iconic songs of all time, according to science.

Think about a song that’s gotten stuck in your head. Maybe it’s Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby,” the State Farm theme song, or, if you’ve already listened to Taylor Swift’s new album “The Life of a ...

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. You know that feeling when you just can’t get a song out of your head—just a short part of it playing over and over?