Hit songs are getting shorter

WHAT IS the “song of the summer”? For more than a century, music fans and critics have considered which anthems capture the season of barbecues and suntans. In 1910 the New York Tribune wondered whether the year’s “summer song” would be “sentimental” or “humorous”, “unmitigated trash” or “at least bearable”.

The songs that will define summer in the northern hemisphere this year will probably be bearable, for they will probably be short. Consider two albums that were loved last summer. “Short n’ Sweet” by Sabrina Carpenter, an American pop star (pictured), lived up to its name. “Brat” by Charli XCX, a British musician, was full of two-minute tunes.

Of the songs that Spotify, a streaming service, reckons will “take over the summer”, half are under three minutes. Yet The Economist’s analysis of almost 1,200 number-one hits suggests brevity is not season-specific. The average length of songs that top the Billboard Hot 100 has decreased by around 18%, from four minutes and 22 seconds in 1990 to three minutes and 34 seconds in 2024 (see chart). Songs are the shortest they have been since the 1960s. The mentality, summed up by Jennie, a South Korean artist, is: “Don’t bore us, take it to the chorus.” (Her song, “Like Jennie”, lasts two minutes and three seconds.)

Song lengths are influenced by technology. For much of the 20th century tracks were short because shellac and vinyl records could hold only three to five minutes of music on each side. The introduction of cassettes in the 1960s and CDs in the 1980s allowed artists to croon for longer; hits such as “Hotel California” (1977) and “Sweet Child O’ Mine” (1988) were six or seven minutes long. Runtimes remained lengthy for much of the 1990s. But in the digital age they have shrunk again.

The economics of streaming is one driver of the trend. Artists are paid each time their song is streamed, so long as the listener tunes in for at least 30 seconds. That has encouraged music-makers to get snappy, with brief introductions and early choruses. In general “The shorter the song is, the more streams it’s going to get,” says Bart Schoudel, a producer and engineer who worked on Ms XCX’s “Brat”.

Another oft-cited explanation is TikTok. By one count more than 75% of the tracks in Britain’s top 40 singles chart have gone viral on the short-form video app. On social media, disgruntled listeners have complained that “embarrassingly short pop songs” are an attempt “to appease the TikTok generation”. Yet, as Adam Read, TikTok’s music editorial lead in Britain, points out, the app boosts “songs of every length”. A recent viral song, “Messy” by Lola Young, runs for nearly five minutes.

Short songs are often seen to represent the erosion of taste. Some of them are indeed firmly in the unmitigated trash category, such as “Steve’s Lava Chicken”, a 34-second song from “A Minecraft Movie” that recently broke the record for the shortest song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. But plenty are good. “Hit The Road Jack” (1961) lasts just two toe-tapping minutes.

Making a song shorter is similar to editing a book—it is the musical equivalent of killing your darlings. That is particularly important for new artists, notes Mr Schoudel, as talent scouts tend to skip songs that do not get “to the point”. Musicians hoping to make the next summer hit may wish to follow Ms Carpenter’s example and keep things short and sweet. ■