No one loves the Spice Girls more than me, except maybe David Beckham, but a recent scientific study conducted by the University of Amsterdam that’s revealed “Wannabe” to be the “catchiest song of all time” doesn’t seem to bode all that well for the human race.
According to the study, “catchiness” pertains to how long a song stays in your head after you’ve heard it. This is known as an earworm effect (not to be confused with a wormhole, which I know we’re all looking for so we can go back to 1996 and listen to “Wannabe” as though it was new again). Choosing the Top 40 songs from each decade of the past seventy years, the team of researchers developed a game that unearthed the sad fact that listeners were able to identify “Wannabe,” on average, in 2.29 seconds.
