While members of different generations grew up with different music, we all share one thing in common. When we were young, the older generation was always telling us how much better the music was in their day. Every generation also seems to think that whatever current music is in style, it is so much more repetitive than the music they grew up with.
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It just so happens that your elders were right. Colin Morris conducted a study for the online magazine The Pudding in which he found that the repetitiveness of songs on the Billboard Hot 100 had steadily increased between the chart’s inception in 1958 and 2017, the year in which he conducted and published the analysis. Unless the pop music of recent years has managed to buck the 60-year trend found in the study, the top hits you’re listening to now are more repetitive than those that were charting at any time since before The Beatles became a worldwide phenomenon.
Though Hot 100 songs this century have been far more repetitive than those of the last one, the three most-repetitive songs in Morris’ rankings were all from the 1900s. The next time you hear someone complain about how today’s songs are too repetitive, you can inform them that Daft Punk’s “Around the World,” released in 1997, is the most repetitive Hot 100 hit ever (or at least up until 2017). Fatboy Slim’s “The Rockafeller Skank” (1998) and Jimmy Smith’s “Chain of Fools (Part 1)” (1968) are not far behind. However, all three of these songs failed to reach the Top 40 of the Hot 100, so there may be better examples of songs from the 20th century that could help you to make your case. Let’s take a look at the five most-repetitive Top 40 hits from before the year 2000—and we’ll include some bonus repetitive songs for good measure.
Note: Morris’ article goes into great detail about how he measures repetitiveness, but the TLDR version is songs with frequently repeated phrases, words, and even some combinations of letters get a higher repetition score.
The most repetitive Top-40 hits of the prior century include some of the biggest songs from their respective years. Here are the five songs from the Top 40 that repeated themselves the most.
5. “Funkytown” by Lipps Inc. from Mouth to Mouth (1979)
Lipps Inc. lead singer Cynthia Johnson left us with no doubt about which town she wanted to be taken to. If not for the relatively varied two-line verse that kicks off “Funkytown,” it would have certainly ranked even higher. Though this No. 1 pop and dance smash was highly repetitive, Lipps Inc. did not repeat the feat of cracking the Top 40 with another song. The Australian band Pseudo Echo would return “Funkytown” to the charts in 1986, taking it to No. 6 on the Hot 100.
4. “Pump Up the Jam” by Technotronic from Pump Up the Jam (1989)
What “Pump Up the Jam” lacked in lyrical diversity, it made up for with its addictive danceable groove. The song was Jo Bogaert’s attempt to break through with a hit outside of his native Belgium, and he and his Technotronic compatriots succeeded, as “Pump Up the Jam” became a Top-10 entry in numerous countries. It peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100 as well as No. 1 on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart, and it is Technotronic’s only Platinum-certified single.
3. “Who’d She Coo?” by Ohio Players from Contradiction (1976)
It takes Ohio Players 29 seconds to get to their first utterance of the song’s title. Then the remainder of the song consists of repetitions of either Who’d she coo or Everybody do it (or some variation thereof). Despite its repetitive quality, “Who’d She Coo?” hasn’t gotten stuck in our collective psyche—it doesn’t even rank in Ohio Players’ top 10 songs on Spotify. It was a hit in its day, though, reaching No. 18 on the Hot 100 and becoming Ohio Players’ fifth and final No. 1 song on Billboard’s R&B chart.
2. “Keep It Comin’ Love” by KC and the Sunshine Band from Part 3 (1976)
It’s hardly surprising to find KC and the Sunshine Band in these rankings. Disco was widely criticized for repetitive lyrics, and Harry Casey and company were the kings and queens of repetition. Of the 25 Hot 100 songs with the highest repetition scores, KC and the Sunshine Band recorded four—the most of any artist. “Keep It Comin’ Love” was not only their most repetitive hit, but it earned a higher repetition score than any Top-40 song from the 21st century. It earned a slightly higher score than DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What,” which went to No. 4 on the Hot 100 in 2014.
1. “Let’s All Chant” by the Michael Zager Band from Let’s All Chant (1978)
Zager’s only foray into the Top 40 barely made it there, peaking at No. 36. However, it topped Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart, and it also has a higher repetition score than any other Top 40 song from between 1958 and 2017. The title is repeated 27 times, and the words “body” and “everybody” are collectively uttered 66 times. The song was appropriately included on the soundtrack for the 1998 film The Last Days of Disco.
What About Songs that Weren’t Dance Hits?
You may have noticed a trend in that four of the five songs featured were hits on the dance chart as well as the pop chart. (“Who’d She Coo?” was the lone exception.) If you’re wondering which Top-40 songs that didn’t crack the dance charts had the highest repetition scores prior to 2000, here’s the top five.
5. “Neanderthal Man” by Hotlegs
4. “After Midnight” by Eric Clapton
3. “I’m a Train” by Albert Hammond
2. “Any Way You Want It” by The Dave Clark Five
1. “Who’d She Coo?” by Ohio Players
There is no denying lyrics have gotten more repetitive over the years. Yet as these rankings show, it would be a mistake to forget some of the most repetitive hit singles ever recorded were made long before terms like “streaming” and “download” entered the lexicon.
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Photo by Steve Joester/Shutterstock
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