Who will win Eurovision 2023? Scientists reveal the formula for the winning song

With the final of the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday night, many Britons will be dusting off their Union Jack garlands for another outing.

Although the UK is hosting the event this year, the country has not won the competition since 1997, when Katrina and the Waves performed ‘Love Shine a Light’.

Despite this, 25-year-old Mae Muller hopes she gets a few more than ‘zero points’ after performing her entry ‘I Wrote a Song’.

But will it be crowned the winning song? Over the years, researchers have studied the art of pop music, and what makes the most catchy tunes.

MailOnline looks at how the London-born singer will fare when she takes the stage at the M&S Bank Arena this weekend.

Researchers have found that the most popular hits usually contain repetition, are about a relationship and are sung in English. It should also focus its lyrics on the listener, have a dramatic chord change, and have a low “harmonic surprise.” In the photo: Mae Muller during dress rehearsal

In 1941, the philosopher Theodor Adorno published an essay entitled ‘On Popular Music’ in which he argues what makes it different from ‘serious’ music.

He claims that songs that gain popularity are subject to “standardization,” with repetitive lyrics and about three minutes in length.

“Most famous is the rule that the chorus consists of thirty-two bars and that the range is limited to one octave and one note,” he wrote.

The German musicologist added that the range of topics covered within the lyrics is also often limited.

He wrote, “The general types of hits are also standardized: not only the dance types, whose rigidity of pattern is understood, but also the ‘characters’ such as mother songs, house songs, nonsense or ‘novelty songs’, pseudo-children’s songs, lamentations for a lost girl.”

Songs entered in the Eurovision Song Contest can be a maximum three minuteswhich has resulted in most winning numbers being largely the same length.

In addition, Glenn Fosbraey, the Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Winchester, found that there is a common lyrical subject.

Of the last 20 winning songs, 17 were about relationships and 13 used the word “love,” he wrote in The conversation.

But this is not the only similarity as they have all 20 choruses that help the viewers remember the song when it comes to voting.

What’s more, when University of Southern California psychologists analyzed 55 years of the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, they found that repetition is key.

Songs that repeated entire sentences and individual words more often were likely to be commercially successful.

Researchers at Goldsmiths University of London conducted a study in 2016 to find out which musical elements turn a mainstream tune into a catchy tune.

They asked 3,000 people to name the songs that most often teased them as earworms.

They then compared these to songs that had never been labeled as earworms, but were equally popular on the charts in terms of popularity.

The features they discovered that were unique to the earwigs were also common in nursery rhymes, which are designed to be easy to remember.

They have a simple, repeating melody that makes them particularly prone to getting stuck in the mind.

In 2017, neuroscientists at Georgetown University in Washington, USA, examined 545 top-selling pop songs to find out why they were so popular.

They analyzed the harmonies chord by chord and found that many contained an element of “harmonic surprise.”

This is an unexpected chord change, which is thought to trigger a rush of dopamine in the brain, similar to that caused by food and sex.

This is when people get ‘shivers’ from a song, and the technique is used by the Beach Boys in the first 10 seconds of ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ and in the closing chorus of the Beatles classic ‘Penny Lane’ .

The researchers say the best pop songs usually have choruses with relatively low harmonic surprise, but are preceded by sections with many rare chords.

Another study, from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, found that the right balance between predictability and surprise is crucial for a good pop song.

Music evokes the most pleasure when it encourages the listener “to continuously raise and dissolve expectations as the piece unfolds in time.”

Mr Fosbraey also found that 17 of the last 20 winning Eurovision entries had been sung in English, while 18 engaged the listener by saying ‘you’ at least once.

Therefore, ‘I Wrote A Song’ must contain repetition, be about a relationship and be sung in English to be classified as a pop song that will resonate with the masses.

It should also focus its lyrics on the listener, have a dramatic chord change, and have a low “harmonic surprise.”

Time will tell if Ms. Muller has what it takes to beat the current favourite, Sweden’s Loreen (pictured), who won the contest with the rousing anthem ‘Euphoria’ in 2012.

Mae Muller’s song fits the assignment in many of these aspects; it is sung in English, and the lyrics describe her response to a broken relationship, which is to write a song.

The singer herself said: “I wrote the song ‘I Wrote A Song’… when I was struggling and wanted to feel stronger about relationships.”

It also addresses the listener as “you,” and is lyrically very repetitive, with only 29 percent of its 308 words being unique, according to Mr. Fosbraey.

The song is also sonically repetitive, including only four chords – A minor, F, D minor and E – that loop continuously.

This also gives it that sense of comforting predictability common in other popular hits, which is enhanced by how it begins and ends with the root chord of A minor.

It is common for a chorus to begin and end on the first chord of the key, as our ears like to hear, and it gives a pleasant feeling that the song has returned “home”.

Mrs. Muller’s song lacks any real elements of surprise, with no uplifting key or chord changes, but this makes it more like a nursery rhyme.

Indeed, much like “Three Blind Mice” or “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” the tune tends to go up and down note by note, without making any major musical leaps.

This, along with the repeating “da-da-da-da-da-I” hook, makes it accessible, allowing anyone of any age to sing along the first time they hear it.

So, accompanied by some glittering costumes and choreography, ‘I Wrote a Song’ gives Ms. Muller quite a shot at this weekend.

But time will tell if she has what it takes to beat the current favourite, Sweden’s Loreen, who won the competition with the rousing anthem ‘Euphoria’ in 2012.