Milli - Vanilla

Milli Vanilli - Blame it on the Rain
Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice baby

Unfortunately neither hits fit Fibonacci's sequence. However, I can still discuss the methodology behind choosing them as hits. These artists were the youngest of the artists I have explored for 1990 and perhaps hippest of the year as well. This leads me to believe that I chose these songs because of their appeal to my age group. Because I was only 5 in 1990, by the time I reached reasonable music listening age, these songs had been a couple years old and the artists had received quite a bit of exposure on tv. Arguably, both are 2 hit wonders, so the songs are unique gems that have stood the test of time and held a place in my heart as part of my childhood. No clear connection to Fibonacci's golden section sequence was apparent, so perhaps it is preliminarily ok to say that untested artists that constitute one or two hit wonders have done so without the connection to Fibonacci that battle-tested veteran success stories have been able to cash in on...? We must dig deeper!

Beyond the golden section sequence, the other Fibonacci numbers do not apply. Ice Ice Baby is 271 seconds and Blame it on the Rain is 249 seconds...blank on both counts.

That's all for now!

P.S. Perhaps the success of Ice Ice Baby is solely based on its remarkable similarity in tune to "Under Pressure" by Queen - one of the best bands of all time?

Aerosmith

The next song that I looked at was "Janie's Got a Gun" by Aerosmith. This song is one of the classic Aerosmith songs. With Steven Tyler's amazing vocals and Joe Perry's great guitar riffs. This song is on Aerosmith's greatest hits as well as countless rock and roll compilations.

The duration of the song is 303 seconds with a kick ass guitar solo that runs for about 20 seconds, the tail end of it being at 189 seconds into the song. 303/189 = 1.603. Definitely close enough to conform to the golden section!

The song, however, does not conform to any fibonacci numbers

The Fabulous Mr. Joel

Billy Joel - I go to Extremes

Where do I begin, Billy Joel is the king of longevity. I can roll 20 songs of his off the top of my head at any time because EVERYONE knows and loves Billy Joel and his wonderful piano melodies and memorable lyrics. This particular song is off Greatest Hits Vol. III, which may not be his most highly regarded album, but produced several songs worth remembering, including this one. Once again, my definition of a hit revolves around a successful artist continuing to pump out great music that never seems to get old over time.

4:19 / 2:39 = 1.629 - not too far off...

I didn't find any correlation between the sequence numbers and this song. It is 259 seconds long, which is not a Fibonacci sequent number...


On to the next song I suppose!

Michael Bolton

Yes guys, I did it..I looked at a Michael Bolton song. I'll admit, "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You" is a guilty pleasure of mine. While many people won't admit that they like this song, it really is a hit single. Not only is it extremely radio friendly and recognizable, but it is arguably one of the top love songs of all time. Bolton was huge in the early 90's and his music continues to be very popular.

Golden section: 291 seconds in duration with a long dramatic guitar climax which encompasses over 15 seconds of the song, the halfway point being at roughly 180 seconds into the song.

291/180= 1.616..this is definitely a golden section song!!

I can just picture the entire crowd going crazy as this solo plays and Michael regains his strenghth to finish out this power ballad!

Unfortunately, this song does not conform to the fibonacci sequence as the times do not match up.

More Phil Collins

Just Another Day in Paradise

The song does not follow the golden section sequence...and...being 322 seconds in length, does not fit the alternate Fibonacci sequence either. Maybe this song is just so sweet it would be a hit no matter what sequence it does not not correspond with?

Phil Collins

So, going along with what Seth said, I will list the songs I chose and then state a reason to why I believe them to be a hit....

Phil Collins - Something Happened on the way to Heaven

As a personal favorite of mine, I tend to classify any well known Phil Collins song as a hit because the man has had such a successful career as both front man for Genesis and as a solo artist. I suppose you could say that I might define a hit by the artist that sings the song, in this case a very well known, successful artist with decades worth of longevity that merits his songs, including SHOTWTH, lots of light FM airtime..

4:51 / 2:59(instrumental) = 1.626 - not too shabby

The song is 291 seconds in length, which means it, too, does not fit the other sequence. That seems to be it for this one.

Calloway - I wanna be rich

Merry Xmas to all!

While this 1990 hit does not contain a golden section that fits 1.618, I will still look to see if it conforms with the other Fibonacci Sequence numbers. The numbers are, just to review, 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,233,377,610,987

The song is 275 seconds in length, which means it cannot be analyze for this sequence of numbers...However, upon listening to the song for connections anyway, I found a few notable moments that might merit recognition.

The first dramatic note of the song is at the 8 second mark. The actual first verse of the song is first sang at 34 seconds in. Furthermore, the song is mid instrumental at 89 seconds in. There is another significant instrumental, which leads to the golden section at 144 seconds.

For the record, the song is 4:35 and the golden section, in my opinion, occurs at 2:40 in (1.718)

I will examine my other top hits of 90 songs for appearances of fibonacci.

Vogue

Madonna's famous 1990 song "Vogue" was my first choice to look at. I think this is definitely a hit that has stood the test of time for many reasons. It is one of Madonna's most famous songs, most people know what the song is after the first few bars, and it even spawned one of the most famous dances of the 90's by the same name.

While looking at "Vogue" I noticed that at about 189 seconds into the song, there is a dramatic element that really brings the entire song together. Madonna builds up the chorus, really singing her heart out, a dramatic pause occurs, and than the song continues.

Going with the golden section, the duration of the song is 290 seconds, with the dramatic element happening at 189 seonds making the ratio 1.53..a little too far away to be a true golden section song.

Also, this song does not conform to the fibonacci sequence because it does not fit into one of the times specified.

I'll keep you updated with my next song...

Oh Girl

The next song i took a look at was #84 on the list, "Oh Girl" by Paul Young.

These results were not as exciting as the last one. While i did find the song to be somewhat close to a golden section song (222 seconds long/142 second climax=1.56), the song did not exhibit any of the other fibonacci numbers. Noting the major instrumentals, initial vocals, and other dramatic points in the song left me with a bunch of random numbers that certainly do not conform to the sequence.

One for two so far, not too bad.

Here We Are

I think the song "Here We Are" by Gloria Estefan , which was number 74 on the list, has some of the things you are talking about.

For starters, don't ask me why, but this was the first song i chose to look at. The climax of the song occurs 180 seconds in, when Gloria dials it up a notch in the, "here we are ONCE again...". Anyway, since the song is 292 seconds long, that gives a ratio of 1.62, clearly a golden section song.

I also noted a couple of other things having to do with the fibonacci numbers. For instance, at 21 seconds in, all the instruments kick in for the first time. Also, at exactly 33 seconds in is when the first vocals are heard. I would argue these are fairly significant periods in any song. I wonder how many more of the songs from the list exhibit stuff like this...

This is definately an interesting way to analize these songs a little bit deeper.

Also..

guys, we should really start to look at other aspects of fibonacci other than just simply the golden section.

We should look to see if these hit songs conform to the fibonacci sequence. The fibonacci sequence is a little bit different than the golden ratio in that it has very specific times to look at. A song must have a duration in seconds (or very close) to: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,233,377,610,987

Than, if a dramatic element happens at one of the other numbers in the string above (in seconds), it is a fibonacci sequence song.

For example, if song X is 377 seconds long and has a dramatic element 144 seconds into it, it conforms to the fibonacci sequence.

The List

Guys, I can see already that we are all going to have different opinions on what a "hit" song is and why. Since this is our first time really trying to find relationships between the golden section and hit songs, lets each do it our own way. I propose we go through the list of the top 100 songs of 1990, analyze ones that we think are worthy, and than explain why we chose the song and why we think it is a hit. After that, we can have a list of all of the songs that we found that conform to the rule and hopefully see a pattern form. Maybe every fibonacci song from 1990 was on the billboard charts for atleast 10 weeks, maybe every song was a rock song, or maybe the hit songs from 1990 were NOT fibonacci songs at all. We'll soon find out...

I like it

I think the idea of going through the decade of our childhood year by year is a good idea....I am down for starting at 1990 and working our way towards more recent times... From the list that you(seth) provided, i have chosen the following songs to analyze for fibonacci's sequence..


#7 Another day in paradise - Phil Collins
#22 I wanna be rich - Calloway
#46 Ice Ice Baby - Vanilla Ice
#47 Blame it on the rain - Milli Vanilli
#59 Something happened on the way to heaven - Phill Collins (im a fan what can i say?)
#78 Love Shack - B52s
#82 I go to extremes - Billy Joel

I will take this on in addition to my side endeavor of the music of Pearl Jam, which dominated the early 90s so that fits with this line of thinking...I hope that I will be able to find all of these songs but I will do as best as I can....It's good that we are going in a clear direction....

Sinead

How can you not include "Nothing Compares 2 U"? That is one of the top songs of the 1990s let alone 1990. She was definitely one of the most influential artists of the early 1990s along with Nirvana, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Pearl Jam.

1990

Let's start with the first year of the major decade of our lives, 1990. I looked online and found the top 100 songs of 1990 (http://www.musicoutfitters.com/topsongs/1990.htm). However, a lot of the songs on this list have definltey NOT stood the test of time. Number 2 is "It Must Have Been Love" by Roxette..I've never heard of this song! So the first thing we have to do is go through this list or other ones that we can find and come up with songs that we find worthy enough as "hits" to run the fibonacci tests on.

just from this list alone, the songs that I would look at are:
5. "Vogue", Madonna
12. "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You", Michael Bolton
36. "We Didn't Start the Fire" Billy Joel
38. "Downtown Train", Rod Stewart
46. "Ice, Ice, Baby", Vanilla Ice
56. "U Can't Touch This", MC Hammer
62. "Janie's Got a Gun", Aerosmith
65. "Free Fallin' ", Tom Petty


Now this is just my opinion of the biggest "hits" of 1990- the songs that have stuck around as part of American pop culture. BUT..this is just one persons opinion. Maybe we should look at the top 5 from the year to see if they conform to the rule and than look at the songs that we all classify as the biggest hits. Please respond to this post saying what you think and what songs you are going to look at

Directed Effort

We all seem to be all over the place with this. In order to have a directed effort and maybe draw clear conclusions, I suggest that we pick a year and we all look at all of the songs that may have hit #1 during the course of the year and see which ones have golden sections or follow the fibonacci sequence. Thoughts? If there are no objections, I say we start immediately.

Hits...

I agree that songs at the top of the charts are not necessarily hits. There have been one hit wonders whose songs have obviously lost steam over time and than there are bands like the Grateful Dead who never have number 1 singles but songs that will live forever. What I think we should do is pick an artist (or maybe a year or a genre) determine all of their hits, and work from there. It will give us a clear direction of where we are going with this. Thoughts?

Hits

I do not think commercial success or radio play should be the sole determinants of a hit. Although those factors have a large part in it, I think another criteria should be if its easily recognizable today or even if it transcends generations.

Also I think we should see if there is any correlation in the types of music (i.e. only pop songs, rock songs, ballads, rap, etc.) that exhibit the golden section.

HITS

Hey dudes and dudette,

As far as a hit goes, I think we could either take a scientific approach, which would be seeing what songs have been chart toppers or what albums have gone platinum or double or triple platinum or whatever....or.. we could use a more subjective approach and ask questions to determine a hit. For instance, when you think of a hit, is it a song that most everyone will have heard or heard of....? If so, it's probably a hit. Is it a song you would recognize on the radio despite not knowing what it's called or who sings it? Does simply being played on the radio make a song a hit?

I think that both methods have legitimacy and should be incorporated in our research tactics. I agree that we should each take an artist and go further to see just how well their work conforms to the fibonacci sequence.


p.s. Can't wait for Xmas woooohoo!

HIts...

Obviously, not all fibonacci songs are going to be hits and not all non fibonacci songs are going to be duds..I think we've seen that already. However, I think some very popular artists/groups that have a lot of hit songs also have a lot of fibonacci music. For example, as you guys have posted about earlier, Springsteen and the Beatles have a lot of golden section songs that have sold a lot of records and been a part of American music for years.

I agree that we really should try to find relationships with our discoveries. Maybe we should all start to concentrate on one artist, think of all of their "hits", see which ones (if any) relate to the golden section, and than make a determination as to whether this artist's music is popular or not because of fibonacci. Any thoughts?

p.s. im becoming obsessed with this too!! it's so damn cool!

We may be onto something...

Hey guys. So here's the thrid installment of my research on Blink 182. By far, Enema of the State was there most popular album. If you remember from their previous albums, i found only a couple fibonacci songs on each. On this one, however, i found four of them. And with the album being only twelve tracks long, that is a fairly high percentage in my opinion.

Track 3, "aliens exist" is 192 seconds long. the climax is 120 seconds in for a ratio of 1.6.

"Whats My Age Again" , Blink's most popular song is 148 seconds long. With the climax coming at 92 seconds in. this gives a ratio of 1.608, very close to the exact fibonacci number.

"Dystentary Gary" is 165 seconds long with the climax coming 102 seconds in. thats a 1.617 ratio.

"All the small things" is another song which got a lot of radio time from this album. at 168 seconds long and a climax at 105, is has a 1.6 ratio.

honorable mention goes to track 10, "Mutt". this song was made famous in American Pie. while its playing there is also a breif cameo by blink (they are the guys in the room with the monkey if you wanna check it out). At 203 seconds long and a climax at 124 seconds in, it has a ratio of 1.63, alittle outside of our range, but still pretty close.

As for the album as a whole, it is 2123 seconds long. at 1312 seconds in nothing particularly noteworth happens, so i dont see any fibonacci relationship there.

I find this very interesting for a couple of reasons. I think this makes a strong case that popular music and fibonacci songs are somehow related. i just think it would be too weird if such a high percentage of their hit songs showed the relationship, and there was zero correlation. The question to ask though, i think, is whether the public more or less picks these songs because they like them, or if they were sort of destined to be popular when they were produced because they contained the fibonacci ratio. of course this is way too small a sample to make any definative statements, but we are certainly getting into something here...

next up will be the Mark Tom and Travis Show, Blinks live CD.

This is AWESOME!!

guys, this is so damn cool..I can't believe we're really finding this much music that conforms to the golden section. I hate to admit it but I've really become a little obsessed with finding this music. Now, whenever I listen to music (in the car, on my ipod, on my computer) I ALWAYS see if it has any fibonacci relationship.

Now, the big thing that I want to get out of this is: Are most fibonacci songs hits? Meaning, do they tend to have the longest shelf life and are the most well known? If we can find that most of the songs that conform to this pattern are indeed "hits" than we may really be on to something.

what is everyones thoughts?

Blink 182- Part 2 - Dude Ranch

Hi all. Heres the second installment of my research on Blink 182.

Dude Ranch was Blink's second released album. Altough it is fairly well known today by people into this sort of music, it did not really get popular until after their next couple of albums were released. Part of that has to do with the fact that once they became more well known people wanted more so they looked for some prior albums. Another reason, however, is that in the live CD, they refer to this CD in some of there dialog, and then play a few songs from it.People were exposed to it and liked what they heard. So onto fibonacci...

Here i had similar results to the last album, Chesire Cat. Out of 15 songs, this time i found three that fit the fibonacci numbers. Track 4 "Boring", track 10 "Emo" and track 11 "Josie" showed ratios of 1.6, 1.63, and 1.62 respectively.

I had initially expected that "Dammit", the most famous song from this album, as well as what many consider to be Blink's best song, would exhibit the fibonacci ratio, but no such luck.

the entire album is 2727 seconds long meaning the "fibonacci number" would be just after 26 minutes in. this occurs in the song "Emo." while at this point there is a nice instrumental which happens to be a personal favorte of mine, i do not see this as the climax of the album.

ill see everyone next time with blinks most famous album, Enema of the State.

Blink 182- Part 1- Chesire Cat

Hello everyone. Im curious to see how this whole thing fits in with one of my favorte bands, Blink 182. Most fans of Blink will agree that their success increased with each album until probably the last one they put out, which did not do as well as the previous ones. This seems to coincide with the evolution of their music from a garage punk rock band, to popular punk rock, finally to a new sort of sound which could hardly be considered punk rock. I think it would be cool to see if there are any correlations between the number of hits on each of their albums and the Fibonacci sequence.

So every couple of days I will review an album in the order that they were released. Heres what i found on the first album, Chesire Cat.

This is perhaps the Blink album most appreciated by punk rock purists. As such, few of the tracks on here ever made it to air. However, some of them did become more popular when they were re-released on Blinks' live CD , The Mark, Tom and Travis Show.

There are 16 tracks on this CD but only 15 of them are songs. Out of those only two conformed to Fibonacci: "Carousel" and "Does My Breath Smell" , however, the latter can be disputed as the climax of the song is fairly ambiguous. I find it particularly interesting though, that "Carousel" is one of the two songs that was re-released on the later album. I will definately explore that more when i get to the Mark, Tom and Travis Show.

As for the album as a whole, it is 2530 seconds long, meaning the "Fibonacci climax" would be right around 26 minutes in. I did not find anything special at that point in the album, only a short instrumental which could harldy be confused with the climax of that song or the album.

Ill see everyone in a couple of days with my findings on Dude Ranch.

PEARL JAM - EVEN FLOW

One of my very favorite bands is Pearl Jam, the dominant early 90s grunge band featuring another great Eddie besides the one making this post, Mr. Eddie Vedder. In their popular hit "Even Flow", Eddie rips off a sick guitar solo at 3:01. The song is 4:54 in length...


294/181 = 1.624

Fibonacci is not far off and it's great to see an example of the sequence in such a well known band that happens to be one of my playlists' regular artists..

This is also a fine example of a facemelting guitar solo serving as the climax of a great song...


Long live Pearl Jam!

Journey

I wanted to look at one of the best arena rock bands of the 1980's, Journey. I started with their hit single "Anyway you want it."

duration = 203 seconds
climax = 126

203/126 = 1.611..pretty much directly on the golden section!

The climax is a bone crushing guitar solo that definitely gets the crowd pumped up just in time for Steve Perry to come back in with his magical vocals to close out the song.

Hey Mama (no offense Amy)

The next Black Eyed Peas song I looked at off the Elephunk album was "Hey Mama." This again is easily recognizable but it sadly did not pass my grandfather test. However, I decided to look at it anyway since its off a top selling album as well as received tons of radio play.

The song was hard to come up with a climax as it followed a pattern that would suggest multiple climaxes. One of those climaxes occurred at the 2:12 mark where Fergie sings "Common Papa" and it leads into the chorus. However, one could argue that the climax could have occurred right before the other choruses as well. If you guys have extra time, take a listen and let me know what you think. I really wish there was some way we could pool together or even tag the songs we identify, so we can all download them in case others on the blog do not have the CD.

Duration: 214 seconds
Climax: 132 seconds (although you could argue other spots)

214 by 132 equals 1.6212

Let's Get It Started

Fitting song title to start linking hits to the golden section, "Let's Get It Started" by the Black Eye Peas which is hard to argue against it being a hit. Its the censored verison because this blog is PG-13. The album, Elephunk, sold millions as well as the song is probably recognizable to both males and females and to most ages. I even played the song to my grandfather and while he couldn't name the artist, he knew of the song.


The climax starts at the 2:18 mark where you here the "yaya"s that lead into a rap solo thats ends before the last chorus. Its sort of the moment where you are all pumped up waiting for the last "Let's Get It Started".

Duration: 217 seconds
Climax: 138 seconds

217 by 138 equals 1.5725 which is close enough by our rules. I believe this is the first rap song and Black Eyed Peas song we've done. I'll at more soon to see if theres any correlation.

Nickelback

As I racked my mind to think of other popular music artists to analyze for Fibonacci's Sequence, I thought of the suprisingly popular Canadian group Nickelback....

Their recent song "Far Away" is 3:58 in lenght. The instrumental climax occurs from 2:16 to 2:38 in the song

2:38 - 2:16 = 22 seconds

Adding 11 seconds to 2:16 leaves us with 2:27 as the middle of the climax

3:58 / 2:27 = 1.619


THIS IS VERY CLOSE TO FIBONACCI!

I will continue to probe into the works of Nickelback despite the annoying voice of lead singer Chad Kroger...

Another from our friends The All American Rejects

In the first really popular song (to my knowledge) by the AAR, "Swing, Swing", the climactic guitar solo begins at 2:10 of the 3:28 second song.

208 / 130 = 1.6

This falls within a reasonable deviation from the Fibonacci Sequence and represents the second AAR song that I have discovered to correspond appropriately....

What every man needs

"Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison, I got the song off "The All-Time Greatest Hits of Roy Orbison." Its amazing how timeless this song really is, I bet you if you played the song for someone under the age of 12, they would either recognize or love the song.

The climax of the song is when Roy goes to hit the high note on "tonight" during the verse "Come with me baby, Be mine tonight." I think most people have a guilty pleasure of trying to match Roy on that note whether in their car or in the shower. Well, at least I do.

Duration: 178 seconds
Climax: 110 seconds

178 by 110 equals 1.6182. That's as close as we'll probably get folks. There's got to be some sort of correlation between all these hit songs and the golden section.