There’s a formula for writing a hit song. So why isn’t every song a hit?

This month’s major concert schedule is jam-packed, with artists including Daniel Caesar, Benson Boone, Khalid, Joji, Robyn, J. Cole and Harry Styles all set to play stadiums across the country. Fans will turn up in the thousands to sing along with the biggest hits.

But what makes a song a “hit”, exactly? There’s no shortage of advice on this. Keep the melody singable. Give listeners something familiar, but not too familiar. Make them feel something. Find a catchy hook. Repeat yourself – but not so much that people get bored.

Much of this advice is sensible. Songwriters, producers and music scholars can readily identify techniques shared in successful songs.

At the same time, having the right formula alone isn’t enough to write the next big single.

There have always been rules in music

Arguments about musical taste quickly become arguments about musical technique. In late 16th-century Florence, a group of musicians and intellectuals known as the Florentine Camerata objected to aspects of the prevailing polyphonic style, where two or more singers perform different but complementary melodies at the same time.

They felt this obscured the meaning of the lyrics and diminished their emotional impact. Inspired by their understanding of ancient Greek drama, the Camerata emphasised a single vocal line, allowing for clear and emotively shaped delivery of words.

As Vincenzo Galilei, a Camerata member, lutenist and father of astronomer Galileo Galilei, put it:

when a musician […] does not have the ability to bend the souls of listeners to where he wishes, his skills and knowledge may be considered null and vain.

The Cameratas’ experiments helped create the conditions from which opera emerged.
Centuries later, however, new technologies and social movements transformed popular music.

The rise of rock and roll changed ideas about rhythm, instrumentation and performance. And hip-hop made the manipulation of recorded sound central to musical creation.

What makes a certain style ultimately comes down to a set of choices. Change the style, and the technical advice for success changes with it.

That hasn’t stopped people trying to codify the craft, however. Songwriter Molly-Ann Leikin’s book How to Write a Hit Song is a genuine “how-to” guide that covers song titles, hooks, lyrics, melodic range and structure.

What do successful songs tend to do?

Successful songs often sound familiar, but different. Take Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World. Its opening melody traces the same pattern as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, but transforms it through rhythm, harmony and phrasing. Listeners need enough familiarity to recognise the pattern (consciously or not), but enough difference to keep listening.

Successful songs also make us feel something. That doesn’t necessarily mean they make us happy; they may mix nostalgia, melancholy and hope. Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over and Billy Joel’s Piano Man are good examples. Research has shown listeners can actively seek experiences of sadness, nostalgia and emotional complexity through music.

A hit song will often also leave room for the listener. In Pharrell Williams’ Happy, happiness is compared to “a room without a roof”. It’s hardly a precise definition. The listener brings their own meaning to it.

Finally, hit songs are often catchy and singable, but not too singable. Older songwriters in the Tin Pan Alley tradition treated a range of roughly an “octave plus a note” as a practical ideal: enough space for melodic interest, but still manageable for ordinary voices.

But these rules change. Recent K-pop hits such as Golden from KPop Demon Hunters turn vocal difficulty into part of the song’s appeal.

If we know all this, why isn’t every song a hit?

A hit song is ultimately more than the sum of its parts. It depends on a rare alignment of three factors.

1. A honed craft

A lot of music theory is a distillation of what musicians have done before. This includes, for example, constructing memorable hooks, using patterns of repetition to create expectation, shaping melodies so they feel purposeful, and aligning words and music through techniques such as word painting (where the music interprets or deepens the meaning of the lyrics).

2. Innovation and change.

Today’s new sounds become tomorrow’s conventions. Research shows evolving creative practise is a key factor when it comes to comparing one-hit wonders with creators with sustained success.

Some songs initiate a wave of change. Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel became a breakout hit in 1956 as changing musical tastes brought rock and roll to the centre of popular culture.

The song Torn had also been recorded by other artists without making much impression before Natalie Imbruglia’s 1997 version became a global hit. Ednaswap, the band formed by the song’s original co-writers, recorded it in a slower, grunge-inspired style about a year earlier, without much success.

3. Appealing to the zeitgeist

The third factor driving whether or not a song will be a hit is the wider social and cultural conditions of the time.

Taylor Swift is an obvious example. Scholarship on her work examines not only melody and lyrics, but authorship, collaboration, gender, race, citizenship and the meanings audiences attach to her as a cultural phenomenon.

Her cultural significance is such that the same songs might not be hits if ascribed to someone else. Songs enter a world already crowded with ideas about identity, authenticity and belonging. Sometimes an artist and the zeitgeist align. Sometimes they don’t.

Musicians can study their craft and anticipate change. But chasing the zeitgeist risks sounding calculated or inauthentic. I’ve always felt it is better to write good music and be yourself. Whether or not your songs meet the mood of the moment will fall on everyone else.

Timothy McKenry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.