Feeling Frozen? Can’t pay the Rent? Or fancy Orlando over Uganda? Then cure those winter blues with modern musical theatre hits in ‘happy’ keys and chords. The major F, known as the ‘happiness key’, is linked to emotions of victory, triumph and relief, the major C is linked to positivity – both common in musical theatre.
To discover which songs from popular musicals are boosting the nation’s mood the most, theatre bookings platform SeatPlan conducted a study on the most popular musical hits of all time, using Spotify’s Playlist Miner tool, to analyse the most-played songs from musicals and their use of ‘happy’ keys and chords. Several other sources were used in addition, Spotify’s OrganizeYourData tool gave the average tempo and length for the playlist while TuneBat provided each track’s key and scale.
The most popular happy song is ‘Seasons of Love’ from Rent in the mood-boosting F key, with a total of 81,270,069 streams.
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Top 10 Happiest Musical Hits |
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|
Rank |
Song |
Musical |
Key |
Chord |
|
1 |
Seasons of Love |
Rent |
F |
Major |
|
2 |
Helpless |
Hamilton |
F |
Major |
|
3 |
You’ll Be Back |
Hamilton |
C |
Major |
|
4 |
For Forever |
Dear Evan Hansen |
F |
Major |
|
5 |
When I Grow Up |
Matilda |
F |
Major |
|
6 |
Popular |
Wicked |
C |
Major |
|
7 |
She Used To Be Mine |
Waitress |
F |
Major |
|
8 |
Words Fail |
Dear Evan Hansen |
C |
Major |
|
9 |
It’s Quiet Uptown |
Hamilton |
F |
Major |
|
10 |
Hello! |
The Book of Mormon |
C |
Major |
‘Helpless’ from Hamilton is the second most popular happy song, followed by ‘You’ll Be Back’, which both contain major chords and feature in the top 20 most streamed musical songs of all time.
The study shows a fairly upbeat average tempo of 119 BPM (found to induce a state of joy), a major F key and chord, and some uplifting, catchy lyrics make the winning combination for a feel-good musical hit to cure your winter blues – and support cast recordings in a time when musical theatre is suffering.
When booking your next musical take a look at SeatPlan which collates audience seat reviews and view from seat photos into one easy to use interactive seating plan and searches major ticket websites to find the best deals.
