The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Honors Theses Honors College Spring 5-10-2012 Understanding the Business of Popular Songs Jeremiah Stricklin University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Stricklin, Jeremiah, "Understanding the Business of Popular Songs" (2012). Honors Theses. 87. https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses/87 This Honors College Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College at The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi UNDERSTANDING THE BUSINESS OF POPULAR SONGS By Jeremiah Evan Stricklin A Thesis Submitted to the Honors College Of the University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism March 2012 ii Approved by ______________________________ Paul Linden Assistant Professor of Entertainment Industry ______________________________ Christopher Campbell, Director School of Mass Communication and Journalism ______________________________ David R. Davies, Dean Honors College iii Abstract UNDERSTANDING THE BUSINESS OF POPULAR SONGS By Jeremiah Evan Stricklin March 2012 This paper presents an analysis of Billboard Music Charts’ top twenty popular songs from the year 2011. These songs are studied to determine whether or not their songwriters adhere to hypothetical rules left by songwriting scholars from the past. The criteria for analysis include: length of introduction, length of the entire song, the presence of a memorable ‘hook’, the connection between tempo and key tonality, and the form of each song.