‘Old Town Road’ by Lil Nas X was the shortest number one single in over 50 years
“Don’t bore us, get to the chorus” goes the music industry adage.
Now the hook is arriving faster than ever with the average length of a number one single plummeting by 38 seconds inside a decade.
Old Town Road, the global country-rap smash by Lil Nas X, which clocked in at a brisk one minutes and 53 seconds, is the most successful example of the trend for concision, exacerbated by streaming, which gives listeners the power to skip songs which don’t instantly grab them.
Average length fall
A Music Week survey found that the average length of this year’s number one singles is three minutes and four seconds, a whole 38 seconds shorter than the average across 2009.
That year’s chart-toppers included the slow-burn of Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name”, which takes five minutes to reach its full f-word velocity.
The longest number one song so far this year was dispatched in 3 minutes 39 seconds.
The dominance of digital platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music, where hit songs cleave closely to algorithms, is the cause.
‘Tyranny of streaming’
Music Week editor Mark Sutherland said: “It’s a clear indication of how streaming and the tyranny of the skip rate is changing the actual structure of songwriting, as choruses arrive earlier and earlier and anything that might have audiences reaching for that button is brutally excised.”
Stars are instead packing albums with shorter tracks. The average length of a track on Rapper Drake’s 2018 album Scorpion was 11 per cent shorter than his 2016 collection Views.
Three seconds to grab interest
The survey follows comments by Facebook executive Vanessa Bakewell who told music bosses that they needed to “grab people within the first three seconds” when creating content for social media.
Hit songs are reverting to the pre-digital era, when The Beatles scored their first official UK number one with From Me To You, which said all it needed to do, inside two minutes.
Song lengths looks set to continue their tumble. the average length of a song on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart is now 20 seconds shorter than it was five years ago.
