What Makes a Hit? 10 Years of #1 Turkish Pop Songs

What makes a song popular? What were the most popular Turkish pop songs during the last decade? Did number-one songs sound like each other in terms of mood, danceability, happiness? Does past success predict current popularity? Using data from Spotify and Nielsen Music Control’s weekly number-one hits lists between 2006 and 2017, I try to answer these questions descriptively.

Spotify’s Public API lets you call data based on artist, album, song, playlist, or related artist. It also gives us information about the mood of songs. For example, Spotify reports a song’s valence, where valence is defined as “a measure ranging from 0 to 1 describing the musical positiveness conveyed by a track. Tracks with high valence sound more positive (e.g., happy, cheerful, euphoric), while tracks with low valence sound more negative (e.g., sad, depressed).” Based on the valence metric, I group each piece into one of the following five categories: very sad, sad, neutral, joyful, very joyful.

I also collected data on weekly number-one hits using Nielsen’s Turkish Top 20 list-the official Turkish airplay chart composed exclusively of Turkish language singles in Turkey. These lists inform us about the most played song in a week using data from more than 60 TV channels and radio stations. Putting these data together, you get the following graph. The graph is interactive, so you can discover what was popular on a specific week&year, along with information on songs’ names, artists, and album names.

The first thing to note is there is only one song that is categorized as “very sad” (i.e., its valence was lower than 0.2): Bu Yağmurlar by Emre Aydın (you can listen to this song below). A small number of sad songs managed to be number-ones; however, most hits seem to be joyful or very joyful. Another interesting fact is that it does not look like there is a seasonal trend. All sorts of songs were popular on particular weeks of the year.

For sure, another essential question to ask is whether people’s preferences changed over the years? In other words, do people enjoy happier songs now compared to a few years ago? Using Spotify data, I constructed a happiness index: a function of valence and energy of a song’s melody, which ranges between 0 (very gloomy) and 1 (very happy). In the graph below, I plotted the number-one hits and their happiness index. The chart is interactive - feel free to discover!

Looking at the graph, it is obvious that there is not much change in music preferences - the average happiness index (a function of both valence and energy) seems to be fairly stable across years.

What were musically happiest and most energetic number-one hits between 2006 and 2017? Mor by Hande Yener(2016) and İki Melek by Bengü (2009). What about the most gloomy song having the lowest score on valence ad energy metrics? Çatı Katı by Gökhan Türkmen (2014). Do you remember these songs?

Obviously, this data shows us what was popular back in the day. What about their persistence in shaping music preferences? What determines old songs’ current popularity? We can examine this question using popularity metric from Spotify. Spotify defines the popularity metric as “a value will be between 0 and 100, with 100 being the most popular. The popularity is calculated by algorithm and is based, in the most part, on the total number of plays the track has had and how recent those plays are. Generally speaking, songs that are being played a lot now will have a higher popularity than songs that were played a lot in the past.”

Are we more likely to listen to more joyful old number-one hits? In the chart below, I plot the valence of the songs and their current popularity levels. The red line shows the fitted line. Colors refer to the year of the songs. There seems to be no relation between current popularity and valence.

This graph also shows us the currently most popular old number-one hits. Curious? The most popular old number-one hit is Sor by Serdar Ortaç (2006), followed by Belki Üstümüzden Bir Kuş Geçer by Yüksek Sadakat (2006) and Hoşçakal by Emre Aydın (2010).

What about danceability? Do dance-hits stay more popular over time compared to less energetic songs? To investigate this question, I use Spotify’s danceability metric, defined as “danceability describes how suitable a track is for dancing based on a combination of musical elements including tempo, rhythm stability, beat strength, and overall regularity. A value of 0 is least danceable, and 1 is most danceable.” Below, you can see a graph showing the relationship between danceability and current popularity. Again, no meaningful relationship.

What else can we learn from this graph? Number-one hits of the last decade most suitable for dancing parties in a post-COVID world! Looking at the graph, we see that Çakkıdı by Kenan Doğulu is the most danceable song, followed by Komple by Burak Kut and Bangır Bangır by Gülşen.





One last relationshıp to discover before I conclude. Songs differ in how many weeks they were able to be the number-one hit. Some songs stay number-one as long as 16 weeks, whereas others only manage to hold that title for a week. Is there a correlation between past success and present popularity on Spotify? In the graph below, I plot the numbers of weeks a song stayed as the number one hit and current popularity metric.

Again, no clear relationship. The most successful song between 2006 and 2017 was Aşk-ı Virane by Rafet El Roman and Yusuf Güney. It stayed as the number one hit for 16 weeks! This record is followed by Bangır Bangır by Gülşen and Yolla by Tarkan with 13 weeks. Let’s hear these legends.