That’s How You Write a Song An Analysis of Music Characteristics on Popularity at the Eurovision Song Contest Noé Martin 12180041 Master Thesis Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science Supervisor: Jeroen Lemmens 26/06/2020 Abstract Understanding which musical features that foster popularity in songs is essential for both individual artists and the music industry at large. Predictors of music popularity have been studied in relation to charts and rankings but not in the context of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC). This study explores the impact of musical features on the popularity of a song from the viewpoint of musical emotions. First, song popularity is approached using the emotional valence and arousal framework for low-level musical features. Then, high-level musical features are interpreted based on the concept of musical complexity. The data consists of 168 songs from four editions of the ESC from 2016 to 2019. Results indicate that while comprehensive predictions models of popularity based on emotions can be improved, the loudness and speechiness of a song can effectively predict its success at the ESC. Keywords: musical features, musical complexity, emotions, Eurovision Song Contest. Introduction “Step one: Believe in it And sing it all day long Step two: just roll with it That’s how you write a song” - Rybak, 2018, 1:25 These are the lyrics performed by the Norwegian Alexander Rybak “That’s How You Write A Song” at the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in 2018. The artist seduced the public in 2009 with his winning song Fairytale and returned in 2018. The truthfulness of the lyrics will not be discussed and are let to the reader’s discernment. This study emphasises the last sentence of the lyrics above, how to write a song, and particularly how to write a popular song. While believing in it and rolling with it might help, this paper focuses instead on the impact of musical characteristics in the public’s preference for a song. The Eurovision1 is an international song competition taking place every year since 19562. The contest consists mostly of European countries, each of them submitting a song that represents the nation in a live performance. The winner is determined through a combined tally of both a televote and a jury. Although there is no prize money for the winner, the country represented by the artist gets to host the next edition of the contest. Every year, betting websites give the opportunity to gamble on the scores and win money, and competitions are organised rewarding the model that is the most accurate in forecasting the winner (e.g. "Forecast Eurovision Voting | Kaggle", 2020). 1 The term ‘Eurovision’ is used to refer to the Eurovision Song Contest throughout this paper. 2 Barring the 2020 edition on the grounds of the COVID-19 pandemic. 1 There is evidence that the popularity of the songs can be predicted in part by politics via the so-called ‘political blocs’ (Yair, 1995; Gatherer, 2007). Certain countries vote for others with whom they have a political affiliation, thus giving rise to ‘alliances’ of countries voting for each other and ignoring the rest. A political approach to the Eurovision clearly sets aside the musical aspect of the contest. Or, in the words of one of the authors, “The winning song has no special traits: no superior harmonies, tunes or orchestration. In fact, the appreciation of music can have no objective rules, since songs reflect national taste, native rhythm and primordial meanings.” (Yair, 1995, p. 149). A second set of related writings concerns the cultural aspect of Eurovision (Yair, 1995, Gatherer, 2007; Ginsburgh & Noury, 2008). Similar to the political approach, a cultural view demonstrates the existence of voting blocs within the jury and “vote trading is rather the consequence of cultural factors” (Ginsburgh & Noury, 2008, p. 50). However, one point of critique is that this reasoning only applies to the judges while reforms of the voting system in 2016 strengthened the effect of the popular vote ("Rules", 2020). Recent studies have focused on the newly accrued importance of the public, for instance seeking to predict the success of a song based on how Twitter fans tweet about it (Demergis, 2019, October). Despite numerous studies on success at the Eurovision, the musical characteristics of the songs have been neglected as a predictor of popularity. The ability to forecast the success of a song with precision is coveted by the music industry. Being able to tell which characteristics make a song popular is crucial for enterprises living off popular music such as record labels, radio stations and artists. A new body of literature exploring the impact of a song’s characteristics on its commercial success has emerged in the last two decades thanks to progress in data mining and machine learning. This body is commonly referred to as Hit Song Science (Dhanaraj & Logan, 2005, September; Ni et al., 2011, December; Pachet & Sony, 2012; Herremans et al., 2014; Pham et al., 2016; Middlebrook & Sheik, 2019) although the term is controversial in its definition (e.g. Ni et al., 2011, 2 December; Pachet & Sony, 2012. Hit Song Science studies are built on the assumption that popular songs share common musical features that can be measured, compared and analysed (Pachet & Sony, 2012). For instance, scholars have tried to predict the success of a song in the Billboard based on its musical characteristics (Parry, 2004; Herremans et al, 2014; Middlebrook & Sheik, 2019). There are various methods to obtain and analyse the musical features of a song, let it be a software (Parry, 2004) academic methods (Dhanaraj & Logan, 2005) or even Spotify data (Middlebrook & Sheik, 2019). Due to the variety of data it provides and the ease of access, the present study employs the tools available on Spotify for Developers (Home | Spotify for Developers, 2020). Despite the ample number of studies conducted on the influence of musical characteristics on popularity, most of them focus on the Billboard ranking as a measure for success (e.g. Parry, 2004; Herremans et al, 2014; Middlebrook & Sheik, 2019). However, other external factors such as marketing techniques, ranking (Cibils, Meza & Ramel, 2015) or artist familiarity (Pham, Kyauk & Park, 2016) can be much more influential in predicting success than musical characteristics. The choice of the Eurovision is motivated by the contest showcasing mostly little-known artists with limited time for exposure before the contest, thereby making it less likely that success is determined by fame or promotion efforts. If proven conclusive, the results of this study will contribute to the body of research about musical characteristics and popularity while providing further evidence on which features matter and to what extent. Finally, this paper aims to examine the impact of musical emotions and complexity on the popularity of a song at the Eurovision Song Contest. To do so, the first objective is to identify which features are most likely to impact popularity based on current literature, before analysing how they relate to musical emotions and preference. 3 Theoretical Background Most of us should be familiar with listening to upbeat music that gets us excited, a melancholic song that makes us even sadder during a breakup or a quiet piece that puts us to sleep. Why do we like certain music and why does it make us feel a certain way? One could argue that our musical taste and how we react to different songs is very personal and hardly measurable in an objective manner. Others could add that although subjective, our preference for certain songs can be explained by its characteristics. This study holds the latter stance. Musical Emotions The field of psychoacoustics seeks to understand human responses to sound from a psychological standpoint. As human beings, we have a propensity to react to sound. Frequencies, notes or tones carry a meaning that can be associated with certain feelings when processed by our brain. As music is a mix of sounds, the listener may experience a complex reaction to it, and so music makes us feel emotions. This reasoning is the very premise of the concept of musical emotions, which aims at explaining how music stirs emotions (Gabrielsson, & Lindström, 2010). However, how this process occurs and to what extent is subject of debate. There are three principal theoretical currents focused on the interaction between music and humans (Coutinho & Cangelosi, 2011). The first approach states that music does not stir emotions in humans, as the emotion would fulfil no goal from a natural-survival standpoint. The reasoning applies despite music eventually carrying an emotional meaning. A second point of view defends the ability of music to generate emotions in its listeners but that these emotions are restrained to a set of emotional states and not basic emotions playing a survival role. A third perspective suggests that music can cause emotions to arise and that they are to be considered as ‘real’ emotions inasmuch as they trigger the same emotional mechanisms. The argumentation of the present paper follows the latter argumentation (Countinho & Cangelosi, 2011). 4 Building on the idea that music induces emotions, scholars have found evidence of different psychoacoustic features having an impact on emotions (Bruner, 1990; Streich, 2006; Gabrielsson, & Lindström, 2010; Lee & Lee, 2018). Research on the matter has made extensive use of the two-dimensional valence-arousal model (e.g., Coutinho & Cangelosi, 2011), where valence corresponds to the range of emotions perceived by the listener (e.g., happy vs. sad) and arousal is characterised by the intensity and energy of such emotions (Loui et al., 2013). In investigating which features have a prominent role on the inducement of emotion and their intensity, Coutinho and Cangelosi (2011) distinguished two categories of musical features.