How many famous songs, that is, how many musical hits, exist?
September, 01; 2024. By Arscodex
At this point we come to unravel a series of considerations about the art of recent music, both instrumental and vocal. It is about elucidating a number, or better two: How many famous songs, or musical hits, exist, and how many famous instrumental compositions exist as well?
Well, we have consulted several sources, first our own intuition and use of music, then some articles with certain data that swarm on the internet today, and we have even asked artificial intelligence about it. In no case there is a categorical answer and rather all of them are quite vague in general. But let's get to the point; yes, how many famous songs are there?
Well, according to the first measurement (the editor of this publication's own use of music), the writer indicates that he handles a couple or three lists with sung pop music (either soul or pop in English, to which we add some other songs in other languages), and these do not exceed 40 songs in any case. But perhaps this number is too short.
Considering the number of songs that reach the top spot on the American hit list (the famous Billboard) per year, which is between 10 and 20 songs, we can say that if these songs have been counted since the 1950s, the number would fluctuate between 50-100 songs.
Let's say hits from languages other than English ("lingua franca" at the time of the emergence of pop music), and the list of famous songs sung does not exceed 500 entries. As this is a short number, let's double it so as not to be conservative. There are no more than 1,000 famous songs sung on the face of the Earth at present.
Let's keep several things in mind. First, we must highlight what it means to be a famous sung song. Well, it's as simple as more than half of the world's population knowing it and knowing how to hum it. In essence, if you ask two people on the face of the earth about a song, at least one of them should know it...
Let's go over a few other things. There is a group, in terms of musical composition, in English of course as we have already indicated, that has perhaps composed, of the famous sung compositions that exist, approximately 10% or 20% of them, it is The Beatles, friends; yes, this group, which published around 230 songs during its period of activity, has the largest number of famous sung compositions that can be assigned to a specific band.
Anyway, some so much and others so little, as they say. And now let's focus on the world of instrumental music. This domain, as we will see now, is perhaps even more selective than the previous one, although it is true that sometimes "the flute" sounds by chance (as it often happens), and someone may be able to compose a sung song that will become famous.
As for instrumental themes, the writer is considering a couple of lists with approximately half the themes that the previous lists of sung music have, therefore, and briefly, we can say that there are perhaps at most 500 famous instrumental themes on the face of the earth. There we see, for example, some of the best composers of all time such as Mozart who, well, have about 10 or 12 famous compositions (that is to say a fairly small number), we mean, compositions that at least one average person out of two can identify and hum.
As we can see, these numbers are short, limited, scarce, and this indicates that any composer or anyone who is able to find a melody that will become famous, either after an intense search, or by chance, or by both, is lucky, since as we have said there is a rather strong "numerus clausus" in all this.
I don't want to leave this article without mentioning myself, once again, as I'm doing the math on my own compositions, both instrumental and vocal, and as time goes by, it seems that there are some that are becoming quite famous. That's what happens with study and order: everything is possible with a little patience and dedication.
Well, we have consulted several sources, first our own intuition and use of music, then some articles with certain data that swarm on the internet today, and we have even asked artificial intelligence about it. In no case there is a categorical answer and rather all of them are quite vague in general. But let's get to the point; yes, how many famous songs are there?
Well, according to the first measurement (the editor of this publication's own use of music), the writer indicates that he handles a couple or three lists with sung pop music (either soul or pop in English, to which we add some other songs in other languages), and these do not exceed 40 songs in any case. But perhaps this number is too short.
Considering the number of songs that reach the top spot on the American hit list (the famous Billboard) per year, which is between 10 and 20 songs, we can say that if these songs have been counted since the 1950s, the number would fluctuate between 50-100 songs.
Let's say hits from languages other than English ("lingua franca" at the time of the emergence of pop music), and the list of famous songs sung does not exceed 500 entries. As this is a short number, let's double it so as not to be conservative. There are no more than 1,000 famous songs sung on the face of the Earth at present.
Let's keep several things in mind. First, we must highlight what it means to be a famous sung song. Well, it's as simple as more than half of the world's population knowing it and knowing how to hum it. In essence, if you ask two people on the face of the earth about a song, at least one of them should know it...
Let's go over a few other things. There is a group, in terms of musical composition, in English of course as we have already indicated, that has perhaps composed, of the famous sung compositions that exist, approximately 10% or 20% of them, it is The Beatles, friends; yes, this group, which published around 230 songs during its period of activity, has the largest number of famous sung compositions that can be assigned to a specific band.
Anyway, some so much and others so little, as they say. And now let's focus on the world of instrumental music. This domain, as we will see now, is perhaps even more selective than the previous one, although it is true that sometimes "the flute" sounds by chance (as it often happens), and someone may be able to compose a sung song that will become famous.
As for instrumental themes, the writer is considering a couple of lists with approximately half the themes that the previous lists of sung music have, therefore, and briefly, we can say that there are perhaps at most 500 famous instrumental themes on the face of the earth. There we see, for example, some of the best composers of all time such as Mozart who, well, have about 10 or 12 famous compositions (that is to say a fairly small number), we mean, compositions that at least one average person out of two can identify and hum.
As we can see, these numbers are short, limited, scarce, and this indicates that any composer or anyone who is able to find a melody that will become famous, either after an intense search, or by chance, or by both, is lucky, since as we have said there is a rather strong "numerus clausus" in all this.
I don't want to leave this article without mentioning myself, once again, as I'm doing the math on my own compositions, both instrumental and vocal, and as time goes by, it seems that there are some that are becoming quite famous. That's what happens with study and order: everything is possible with a little patience and dedication.
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