The next song that I looked at was “Janie’s Got a Gun” by Aerosmith. This song is one of the classic Aerosmith songs. With Steven Tyler’s amazing vocals and Joe Perry’s great guitar riffs. This song is on Aerosmith’s greatest hits as well as countless rock and roll compilations.

The duration of the song is 303 seconds with a kick ass guitar solo that runs for about 20 seconds, the tail end of it being at 189 seconds into the song. 303/189 = 1.603. Definitely close enough to conform to the golden section!

The song, however, does not conform to any fibonacci numbers

Billy Joel – I go to Extremes

Where do I begin, Billy Joel is the king of longevity. I can roll 20 songs of his off the top of my head at any time because EVERYONE knows and loves Billy Joel and his wonderful piano melodies and memorable lyrics. This particular song is off Greatest Hits Vol. III, which may not be his most highly regarded album, but produced several songs worth remembering, including this one. Once again, my definition of a hit revolves around a successful artist continuing to pump out great music that never seems to get old over time.

4:19 / 2:39 = 1.629 – not too far off…

I didn’t find any correlation between the sequence numbers and this song. It is 259 seconds long, which is not a Fibonacci sequent number…

On to the next song I suppose!

Yes guys, I did it..I looked at a Michael Bolton song. I’ll admit, “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” is a guilty pleasure of mine. While many people won’t admit that they like this song, it really is a hit single. Not only is it extremely radio friendly and recognizable, but it is arguably one of the top love songs of all time. Bolton was huge in the early 90’s and his music continues to be very popular.

Golden section: 291 seconds in duration with a long dramatic guitar climax which encompasses over 15 seconds of the song, the halfway point being at roughly 180 seconds into the song.

291/180= 1.616..this is definitely a golden section song!!

I can just picture the entire crowd going crazy as this solo plays and Michael regains his strenghth to finish out this power ballad!

Unfortunately, this song does not conform to the fibonacci sequence as the times do not match up.

Just Another Day in Paradise

The song does not follow the golden section sequence…and…being 322 seconds in length, does not fit the alternate Fibonacci sequence either. Maybe this song is just so sweet it would be a hit no matter what sequence it does not not correspond with?

So, going along with what Seth said, I will list the songs I chose and then state a reason to why I believe them to be a hit….

Phil Collins – Something Happened on the way to Heaven

As a personal favorite of mine, I tend to classify any well known Phil Collins song as a hit because the man has had such a successful career as both front man for Genesis and as a solo artist. I suppose you could say that I might define a hit by the artist that sings the song, in this case a very well known, successful artist with decades worth of longevity that merits his songs, including SHOTWTH, lots of light FM airtime..

4:51 / 2:59(instrumental) = 1.626 – not too shabby

The song is 291 seconds in length, which means it, too, does not fit the other sequence. That seems to be it for this one.

Merry Xmas to all!

While this 1990 hit does not contain a golden section that fits 1.618, I will still look to see if it conforms with the other Fibonacci Sequence numbers. The numbers are, just to review, 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,233,377,610,987

The song is 275 seconds in length, which means it cannot be analyze for this sequence of numbers…However, upon listening to the song for connections anyway, I found a few notable moments that might merit recognition.

The first dramatic note of the song is at the 8 second mark. The actual first verse of the song is first sang at 34 seconds in. Furthermore, the song is mid instrumental at 89 seconds in. There is another significant instrumental, which leads to the golden section at 144 seconds.

For the record, the song is 4:35 and the golden section, in my opinion, occurs at 2:40 in (1.718)

I will examine my other top hits of 90 songs for appearances of fibonacci.

Madonna’s famous 1990 song “Vogue” was my first choice to look at. I think this is definitely a hit that has stood the test of time for many reasons. It is one of Madonna’s most famous songs, most people know what the song is after the first few bars, and it even spawned one of the most famous dances of the 90’s by the same name.

While looking at “Vogue” I noticed that at about 189 seconds into the song, there is a dramatic element that really brings the entire song together. Madonna builds up the chorus, really singing her heart out, a dramatic pause occurs, and than the song continues.

Going with the golden section, the duration of the song is 290 seconds, with the dramatic element happening at 189 seonds making the ratio 1.53..a little too far away to be a true golden section song.

Also, this song does not conform to the fibonacci sequence because it does not fit into one of the times specified.

I’ll keep you updated with my next song…

The next song i took a look at was #84 on the list, “Oh Girl” by Paul Young.

These results were not as exciting as the last one. While i did find the song to be somewhat close to a golden section song (222 seconds long/142 second climax=1.56), the song did not exhibit any of the other fibonacci numbers. Noting the major instrumentals, initial vocals, and other dramatic points in the song left me with a bunch of random numbers that certainly do not conform to the sequence.

One for two so far, not too bad.

I think the song “Here We Are” by Gloria Estefan , which was number 74 on the list, has some of the things you are talking about.

For starters, don’t ask me why, but this was the first song i chose to look at. The climax of the song occurs 180 seconds in, when Gloria dials it up a notch in the, “here we are ONCE again…”. Anyway, since the song is 292 seconds long, that gives a ratio of 1.62, clearly a golden section song.

I also noted a couple of other things having to do with the fibonacci numbers. For instance, at 21 seconds in, all the instruments kick in for the first time. Also, at exactly 33 seconds in is when the first vocals are heard. I would argue these are fairly significant periods in any song. I wonder how many more of the songs from the list exhibit stuff like this…

This is definately an interesting way to analize these songs a little bit deeper.

guys, we should really start to look at other aspects of fibonacci other than just simply the golden section.

We should look to see if these hit songs conform to the fibonacci sequence. The fibonacci sequence is a little bit different than the golden ratio in that it has very specific times to look at. A song must have a duration in seconds (or very close) to: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,233,377,610,987

Than, if a dramatic element happens at one of the other numbers in the string above (in seconds), it is a fibonacci sequence song.

For example, if song X is 377 seconds long and has a dramatic element 144 seconds into it, it conforms to the fibonacci sequence.