Happy songs to rescue hope

Proposing a list of happy songs that can cheer you up is a somewhat risky and somewhat pretentious mission.. Therefore, I am going to try to rely on the dictates of science. Thus, perhaps the first thing we have to keep in mind is that the power of music on our mood is almost magical.

There are songs that call for sadness. There are also those that make us travel in time or those that make us happy, there are even those that make us feel all these sensations at the same time.

On the other hand, we can talk about democratic songs. That is, those that transmit more or less the same thing to all of us. Then, there is a group of very particular songs that produce, encourage or stimulate very different states depending on the receiver.

Happy songs according to science

At the Max Planck Institute (Germany), they carried out a scientific study titled in a somewhat complex way: “Uncertainty and surprise jointly predict musical pleasure, the activity of the amygdala, the hippocampus and the auditory cortex.”

In simpler words, The study had the objective of identifying the pop songs that seem to produce the most joy.

For this, more than 80 thousand chord progressions were analyzed in a total of 745 songs. All recorded between 1958 and 1991, to identify the emotion aroused by the change of its measures between the study groups.

With a machine learning algorithm, A scale was established to evaluate the degree of surprise and joy that each one produced.. From there, a selection was made to place 39 volunteers: the objective was for them to be placed on the scale.

At par The neural activity of the participants was examined to see the effect of the recordings and close a definitive list with the most happy and surprising songs. The first place was occupied by The Beatles, to the surprise of few.

The initial selection was made from Billboard’s “popularity charts.” Thus, these songs ended up occupying the highest places on the list.

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da was the closest song the researchers could find to perfection.Invisible Touch from Genesis.Hooked on a Feeling by BJ Thomas.I Want You Back by The Jackson 5.There She Goes by The La’s.

List of 10 songs according to a study in the Netherlands

Dr. Jacob Jolij, a researcher in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands has tried to identify the songs that bring the most happiness to those who listen to them.

Jolij used a mathematical algorithm that took into account specific variables, such as tempo or lyrics. He analyzed the last five musical decades, made his calculations and established his particular ranking.

For Dr. Jolij, the perfect rhythm of a happy song should have 150 BPM and convey positive energy in its lyrics.

Considering these and other parameters, the scientist came up with a list of songs that would scientifically and theoretically make people feel better, along with another list of songs from each decade.

According to statistics, In the UK alone three quarters of the population use music to lift their mood and 54% use it to motivate themselves.

In this case, the study was carried out in different parts of the United Kingdom such as Liverpool, Newcastle or Norwich, and only subjects who usually use music for motivation were used for the sample.

Below is the list of the “happiest” songs of all time according to the study:

Don’t Stop Me Now (Queen)Dancing Queen (Abba)Good Vibrations (The Beach Boys)Uptown Girl (Billie Joel)Eye of the Tiger (Survivor)I’m a Believer (The Monkeys)Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Cyndi) Lauper)Livin’ on a Prayer (Jon Bon Jovi)I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor)Walking on Sunshine (Katrina & The Waves)

The happiest songs by decades were the following:

2010 – Happy (Pharrell Williams).2000 – Dancing in the Moonlight (Toploader).1990 – Let Me Entertain You (Robbie Williams).1980 – Uptown Girl (Billy Joel).1970 – Don’t Stop Me Now (Queen). 1960 – Good Vibrations (The Beach Boys).

Feeling good about a song is very subjective.

According to Jolij: “There are some key criteria that songwriters consider to create good feel songs, such as lyrics, musical key and tempo, as well as a rhythm of 150 beats per minute.”he added. “The combination of these three ingredients gives us the formula to create or identify a song that will make us feel good.“.

The author of this study clarified: “feeling good from a song is something very personal. Music is closely related to memory. “We are talking about associations that strongly determine whether a song will put us in a good mood or not,” he said.

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