Top 20 Catchiest Songs Of All-Time: Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’ Tops The List

Still find yourself singing Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” all these years later? As it turns out, there’s a scientific reason for that.

The UK girl group’s smash 1996 debut single has been declared the world’s catchiest song of all-time, based on a study done by the University of Amsterdam along with the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, UK.

Using an interactive game called Hooked On Music, researchers compiled the list, based on how quickly users could identify a given song based on a short clip.

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“Wannabe” topped the list, being identified at an average of 2.29 seconds.

Coming in second on the list was one-hit wonder Lou Bega with “Mambo No. 5” at 2.48 seconds. Rounding out the top five were Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” (2.62 seconds), Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” (2.66 seconds) and ABBA’s “SOS” (2.73 seconds).

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“You may only hear something a couple of times yet 10 years later you immediately realize that you have heard it before,” Ashley Burgoyne, a computational musicologist from the University of Amsterdam, told the BBC. “Yet other songs, even if you have heard them a lot, do not have this effect.”

Here are the Top 20 catchiest songs of all-time, as determined by the study:

1. Spice Girls, “Wannabe”
2. Lou Bega, “Mambo No. 5”
3. Survivor, “Eye Of The Tiger”
4. Lady Gaga, “Just Dance”
5. ABBA, “SOS”
6. Roy Orbison, “Pretty Woman”
7. Michael Jackson, “Beat It”
8. Whitney Houston, “I Will Always Love You”
9. The Human League, “Don’t You Want Me”
10. Aerosmith, “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”
11. Lady Gaga, “Poker Face”
12. Hanson, “Mmmmbop”
13. Elvis Presley, “It’s Now Or Never”
14. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet”
15. Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean”
16. Culture Club, “Karma Chameleon”
17. Britney Spears, “Baby One More Time”
18. Elvis Presley, “Devil in Disguise”
19. Boney M., “Rivers of Babylon”
20. Elton John, “Candle in the Wind”

— Eric Anderson