Psychology: Songs With “You” in the Text Apparently Particularly Successful

Grace was not granted, there was no mercy, no escape. Anyone who still managed to avoid attending a screening of the Hollywood big-budget film “Bodyguard” at the beginning of the 1990s was still confronted with the pop cultural foundations of this work. The title track, “I Will Always Love You,” was played on all radio channels for months, sung by Whitney Houston, who also played the leading female role in the film. The song became one of the greatest hits in pop history, was number one on the charts in 16 countries, sold about twelve million copies as a single and became popular in countless ears worldwide. So the question arises: how could this happen?

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The use of the second person singular pronoun (“you”) apparently increases the attractiveness of songs and other text-heavy works of pop culture. This is the argument of Grant Packard from York University and Jonah Berger from the University of Pennsylvania, who have just published a large analysis in the journal Psychological Science. The two scientists evaluated the chart positions and the lyrics of thousands of songs from 2014 to 2016. They found that songs were more successful commercially, if the word “you” was used or sung particularly often.

This applied clearly across all genres. Packard and Berger evaluated songs of various styles, including country, Christian pop, dance floor, R ‘n’ B, rock, pop, rap and so on. And “I Will Always Love You” was also a hit in several genres

*Translated from German*

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