# Ep 229: What Makes a Song Popular? Psychology of Music: How We Detect Melody

An episode of [Psychology in Everyday Life: The Psych Files](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/215516451), 22 Jan 2022, 29 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepsychfiles/ep-229-what-makes-a-song-popular-psychology-of-music-how-we-detect-melody.mp3?dest-id=10763

What makes some songs so popular? Guess what - psychologists actually know a lot of the answers. In this episode we'll listen to excerpts from Leonard Cohen's song Hallelujah, as well as Noisestorm's Ignite, Adele's Someone Like You, the Enterprise Theme from Star Trek, and even two pieces of music from the motion picture Koyaanisqatsi. We'll especially deconstruct "Hallelujah" to figure out why it is such a popular song. Many thanks to musician extraordiaire - Steve Kessler.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.