Cape Town - A panel of expert data scientists from has revealed Shakira’s Waka Waka (It’s Time For Africa) from the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa as the catchiest world cup song.
The song earned a total catchiness score of 8.4/10 based on factors such as its popularity, danceability, and energy.
This iconic track by the Colombian songstress and South African musical band Freshly Ground draws inspiration from African music.
According to SeatPick, who are a sports ticket platform, the song has received a total 79% popularity score, which seems fitting as the music video has been viewed over 3.3 billion times on YouTube and is on multiple Spotify playlists.
SeatPick said they scraped data from Spotify’s API and YouTube views, they were able to find the most catchy football anthems.
They were able to measure how catchy each track is by how danceable and energetic it is, its level of ‘speechiness’ (the number of spoken words), and valence (how positive the track is).
In giving props and alluding as to why the song is catchy, Baruch College’s Professor of Music Appreciation, Jake Cohen, said that the main phrase “Waka Waka” has been repeated a significant number of times to emphasise its importance (Waka Waka means “do it” in Cameroonian language).
“There is a major change at 1:04, as a cymbal-like instrument is introduced to add more variation to the melody. Furthermore, the new vocalist at 2:12 generates a unique kind of exotic sensation to its listeners,” Cohen said.
The full comprehensive dataset with all figures analysed by SeatPick of top world Cup anthems:
- Shakira’s
- Trinidad Cardona’s Hayya Hayya (Better Together) 6.9/10.
- Ricky Martin’s La Copa de la Vida (6.5/10)
- Pitbull’s We Are One (Ole Ola) featuring Jennifer Lopez and Brazilian pop star Claudia Leitte (6.5/10)
- KNAAN’s Wavin’ Flag and Martin Garrix’s We Are The People (5.9/10)
- Baddiel, Skinner & The Lightning Seeds’ Three Lions
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