The Science of Singing Along: A Quantitative Field Study on Sing-along Behavior in the North of England
Alisun Pawley, Daniel Müllensiefen · Music Perception An Interdisciplinary Journal · 2012
the study investigates contextual and musical factors that incite audiences in Western music entertainment venues to sing along to pop songs. Thirty nights of field research were carried out in five entertainment venues across northern England. The percentage of people singing along was recorded for each of the 1,054 “song events,” serving as the dependent variable. In addition, musical analysis was carried out on the songs of a subset of 332 song events. Nine contextual factors as well as 32 musical features of the songs were considered as different categories of explanatory variables. Regression trees and a random forest analysis were employed to model the empirical data statistically. Results indicate that contextual factors can account for 40% of the variability in sing-along behavior, while adding musical factors into the model – in particular those relating to vocal performance – was able to explain about another 25% of the variance. Results are discussed with respect to theoretical approaches on neo-tribal behavior.