Creating Hit Songs and Planning Worship

A few artists manage to make hits that also win Grammys

Since the 58th Grammy Awards are presented on Monday night (February 15), this seems like a good time to think about hit songs. That's not because Grammys necessarily go to hit-makers. In fact, a Grammy is just a recognition by one's peers in the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of a quality song or record. Hits, by contrast, are measured by how many times someone actually pays to listen to a song by buying a copy, streaming it, or hearing it on a broadcast. Ask musicians whether they would rather have a Grammy or a hit song: they can put a Grammy on their mantle, but they can take a hit to the bank.

Record executives know that hits are not composed as much as they are created through extensive promotion. A pop song can have all the elements necessary to break through: a driving beat, a melodic hook, memorable words, and a flawless performance by a star. But if people don't hear a song enough times to become familiar with it, then that recording will never break into the playlists of the Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) format. Even in this age of the stream and download, CHR (think Top 40) is still the arbiter of what gets bought and played.

Two recent books discuss how this familiarity works for listeners and record companies. For example, in The Song Machine John Seabrook describes the listening habits of waitresses at the end of their shift at a certain restaurant. After all the customers were gone at the end of the night, when the wait staff had full control of the jukebox, they continued to select the same hit songs that had been playing all day. Instead of being tired of those tunes, the staff wanted to hear the hits that they were familiar with. This draw of the familiar is also described in Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit. He says that, when asked directly, most Americans will tell you they dislike the music of Celine Dion. However, their real listening habits show that they actually select her hit songs when given the option.

Duhigg says that these people are not lying about their low view of cheesy pop music. His point, along with Seabrook's jukebox example, is that quality and novelty are not the only things -- perhaps not even the primary things -- that drive our listening habits. We actually choose to listen to bad songs that we know over good ones that are new to us. (Disclosure: my own Spotify playlists bear this out.) That is why record companies work to create familiarity. Indeed, hits don't just "happen."

This has implications for planning worship services. People in churches have the same kind of attachment to the familiar -- they come hoping to encounter the songs, movements, visual elements, and people they know. Yet pastors and worship leaders are constantly trying to introduce new things in those services, thereby disrupting the worshippers' attachment to the familiar. Church leaders could learn some strategies from record executives for helping people fall in love with new things, creating familiarity through intentional planning. Duhigg's book includes a copy of a radio station's playlist, showing that DJs introduce new songs by sandwiching them between familiar hits that listeners already know and like. CHR radio listeners never have to endure more than 3 minutes of something unfamiliar before they land back on a known song. Maybe worship services should be planned with the same kind of thoughtfulness. Adding a new song to next week's lineup? Put it between two standards that people love and sing by heart. Changing the way you are doing Communion? Then choose a well-known song to accompany the giving of the elements. After a few weeks of carefully placing something new next to the familiar, you may have a "hit" on your hands.