What are the catchiest songs ever?
- Published
The Spice Girls' first song, Wannabe, is the catchiest single in British history, an online experiment suggests.
Researchers developed the interactive game, Hooked on Music, as part of a scientific study to work out what it is that makes music memorable. Lou Bega's 1990 hit Mambo No 5 was the second catchiest song.
In third place was Survivor's 1982 hit Eye Of The Tiger. The song was created when actor Sylvester Stallone asked for a tune to be written for his film Rocky III.
Lady Gaga took the fourth spot with her song, Let's Dance. More than 12,000 people took part in the online experiment, which was developed by the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.
Participants were asked if they could recognise songs which were randomly selected from more than 1,000 clips of best-selling songs, dating from the 1940s until the present day. The fifth most-recognised song was Swedish band ABBA's 1975 hit SOS.
Sixth place was American singer-songwriter Roy Orbison's 1964 single Oh Pretty Woman. The song became famous around the world.
Seventh place was one of Michael Jackson's many hits, Beat It.
Eighth place was Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You. The song was originally written by country singer Dolly Parton.
Ninth place was taken by the band The Human League with their single Don't You Want Me.
Tenth place was given to Aerosmith and their famous song I Don't Want To Miss A Thing. The song is still popular today - Caroline Flack and Pasha Kovalev picked it for one of their dances on this year's Strictly!