Hypebot has written the first data-driven hit song and wants you to sing their first single. Inspired by the work of Jay Frank of FutureHitDNA, I decided to craft my own hit song and hold a contest that challenges you to write the music.
What’s unique about the lyric is that the words are those used most often in the Top 50 selling downloads of this year. That’s right, Jay made this fascinating, yet revealing inforgraphic and I followed it religiously to write this "catchy" lyric.
Words like “love,” “baby,” and “like” were all I had to work with. The result is humoring at times, scary in others. The Hypebot Hit Song Contest invites you to take part in the fun and produce the most stereotypical pop song you can imagine. Think KE$HA meets Justin Bieber. Baby, baby, your love is my drug.
Winners will get to make their claim to fame and will receive a number of cool prizes, yet to be confirmed, including a one-time, hit-song analysis performed by Mr. Jay Frank* himself. In the coming weeks, we’ll roll out the details and give you the opportunity to pay homage to the kind of music that you just love to hate.
Just so you, the respectable artist, musician, or singer know what kind of terrible awesomeness your getting yourself involved in, here's a preview of the chorus:
Chick I wanna know, cause I get around now—like bad
Love gonna stop, Imma rock your body hard—like damn
Had enough tonight, I wanna break the love—like bad
To illustrate how I used the data to write this lyric, I've color coordinated the words. I used the largest words on the chart for the chorus and the smaller ones for the verses. The words in black are in the raw data, but are not in the image.
Again, this is just a teaser for things to come. Stayed tuned. We hope to break out the contest at the top of next week, if there aren't any last minute snags.
*On a related note, Jay Frank will be speaking at New Music Seminar tomorrow.
