Sing-a-long Songs

What makes a song worthy of singing along?

Have you ever been in a crowd when complete strangers ended up singing together?

Whether it’s the fans at an athletic event belting out a line (“Nah-nah-nah-nah, Nah-nah-nah-nah, hey, hey, heyyyy, gooooodbye.”), people at a pub crooning along to Lean on Me or the entire Olympic stadium joining a performance of Hey Jude, you can probably remember a time when you (or the people you were with) got swept into a popular song.

Alisun Pawley observed this phenomena enough times that she decided to study it.

A “musicologist” at Kendal College in England, Pawley began touring England’s pubs listening for impromptu sing-a-longs. After a month of observing, she’d taken notes on public reaction to 1,110 songs. Then Pawley enlisted colleague, music psychologist Daniel Müllensiefen from the University of London to join her in analyzing the music. Together they reviewed the songs for similarities that might suggest what gave them such a tribal quality.

What made them sing-a-long songs?

Their initial observations found that young people were more likely to sing along with each other than older pub-goers. And people of all ages were more likely to break into the song late in the evening. Also, the songs most likely to inspire a spontaneous choir? The high-energy crooning of male vocalists. Particularly if they sang older songs that had some sort of cultural significance.

One thing is for sure, some sort of share meaning–represented by the songs–brought people, even strangers, together.

What do you think? What is it about certain songs that makes people sing along? And throw out some titles: what songs are you (or people in general) most likely to sing?

You can read more about the study and see some popular pub songs here. Or catch the complete findings later this year in the journal Music Perception.