Johannesburg - Shakira’s Waka Waka (This Time for Africa), the official 2010 FIFA World Cup song, is the catchiest football anthem, new research has found.
SeatPick, the largest ticket search engine and ticket marketplace for live events, found that the hugely popular uptempo anthem for the football World Cup in South Africa which featured local band Freshlyground, has since remained one of the South American siren’s most popular songs, and used science to prove this.
The SeatPick study found that in terms of overall popularity, ‘Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)’ blew all the other football songs out of the water.
“It has over three billion views on YouTube alone and also scores high in certain criteria, like danceability (7.6/10), energy (8.7/10), and valence (7.4/10).”
The research added that Its speechiness score (8.42/10) is also helping its popularity.
“There are fewer words to learn so anyone can sing along and all of this results in Waka Waka winning first place with 8.35/10.”
The research found that last year’s Qatar World Cup official song Hayya Hayya (Better Together) by Trinidad Cardona was the second most catchiest football anthem.
“The Qatar World Cup may have a fair few controversies attached to it, but Hayya Hayya by Trinidad Cardona isn’t one of them,” the researchers said.
The tune garnered over 42 million YouTube views in just seven months and has high scores across the board.
“Starting with 2.6/10 for speechiness, it also scored 6.2/10 for valence, 7.3/10 for danceability, and 8.3/10 for energy.”
SeatPick explained that while it’s less popular on Spotify, scoring just 20/100, its overall score is a healthy 6.9/10.
In third place for the catchiest football anthem was Ricky Martin’s ‘La Copa de la Vida’ for the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France.
“Ricky Martin’s 90s hit has proved to be a football classic and was a huge success on release,” the researchers said.
They added that the FIFA world cup song has even been credited as being the cause of the “Latin Explosion” in pop music.
“Despite this, it receives a score of 11 for popularity and has a relatively low 77 million views on YouTube. This is made up for by its high scores in valence (6.6/10), danceability (7.1/10), and energy (9.1/10). With a speechiness score of 4.2/10, La Copa de la Vida receives an overall score of 6.53/10.”
In order to compile the research, SeatPick used four main metrics to create their ranking.They also looked at how well the songs performed on YouTube and Spotify.
The metrics are:
Danceability: how good a song is to dance to, based on elements including tempo, rhythm stability, beat strength, and overall regularity.
Energy: how energetic the song feels based on speed and volume. Typically, energetic tracks feel fast, loud, and noisy.
Speechiness: how many spoken/sung/rapped words are in a song.
Valence: measuring how positive/happy a song feels. Tracks with high valence sound more positive.
The data was collected in November 2022 and is subject to change.
To round off the top 10 of SeatPick’s catchiest football anthems was Pitbull – We Are One (Ole Ola) (feat. Jennifer Lopez & Claudia Leitte).
“This was FIFA’s official song in 2014 and has retained a decent amount of popularity since then,” the researchers said.
They added that while Waka Waka has over three times the number of YouTube views, the song still has a healthy number (862 million) and a popularity score of 71/100. It scores highly in danceability (5.9/10), and valence (5.8/10), and beats Waka Waka in energy (9.3/10). Its speechiness score (5.8/10) gives it an overall score of 6.3/10.
In fifth plan was K’NAAN – Wavin’ Flag (The Celebration Mix).
“The Somali-Canadian artist first released this song in 2008, and it was a huge hit and was covered as a charity single by an ad-hoc group called Young Artists for Haiti following the 2010 disaster,” SeatPick said.
In 2010, Coca-Cola also picked the song as their promotional anthem for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
“This version, known as the ‘celebration mix’, became a global success.”
The researchers explained that despite over 400 million views on YouTube, as well as high scores across energy (6.5/10), danceability (7/10) and valence (7.8/10) it scores only 3.68/10 for speechiness and has 11/100 for popularity on Spotify. However, it lands in fifth place on our list with an overall score of 6.1/10.
Meanwhile, Martin Garrix – We Are The People (feat. Bono & The Edge) was ranked as the sixth most catchiest football anthem as it was the official song for Euro 2020.
“2020 was a weird time for everything, and this was especially true in football,” SeatPick said.
“Due to Covid restrictions, the UEFA Euro 2020 was actually held in 2021 and Martin Garrix’s song We Are The People was released in May of that year, as the official UEFA Euro 2020 song.
The song was met positively, garnering a respectable 31 million views on YouTube in the space of a year. It scores a healthy 62/100 for popularity on Spotify and continues to score well through the rankings. While it scores 2.11/10 for speechiness and 3/10 for valence, it receives 6.6/10 for danceability and 7.33/10 for energy. This gives We Are The People 6.15/10.
Meanwhile, Nelly Furtado’s ‘Força’ came in seventh place for catchiest football anthem.
“It was the official song for the European Football Championship, which in 2004 was held in Portugal. “Força” is Portuguese slang for “keep going”,” the researchers explained.
The song is still a popular one, with over 7 million YouTube views and 46/100 for popularity on Spotify. It scores well across the board with 1.58/10 for speechiness, 5.27 for valence, 6.53/10 for danceability and 8.52/10 for energy. Altogether that gives Forca 5.88/10.
In eight place was New Order’s ‘World in Motion,’ the 1990 FIFA World Cup song,
“World in Motion", was a number 1 hit in the UK. Despite this, it might be one of the lesser-known songs on our list. With a (relatively) paltry 9.7 million views on YouTube, it still scores a decent 29/100 for popularity on Spotify,” SeatPick said.
“It has middling to high scores across the board, achieving a 4.7/10 for speechiness, 6/10 for danceability, 7.9/10 for valence, and a huge 9.5/10 for energy. Overall, this 90s classic receives a 5.8/10.”
Nicky Jam – Live It Up (feat. Will Smith & Era Istrefi) was ninth and researchers explained that it received mixed reviews when it was released in 2018, with fans baffled at the choice of genre.
“But despite this, the official FIFA World Cup song has landed in the top ten. This is due to its popularity on Spotify (63), YouTube views (40 million), along with some high scores. It received 5.8/10 for danceability, 8/10 for valence, and a huge 9.4/10 for energy. This classic underdog story gets a final score of 5.5/10.”
Fat Les’s ‘Vindaloo’ rounded off the top 10.
“When you think of football songs, Vindaloo has to be one of the first that springs to mind,” SeatPick said.
The song was originally written as a parody of football chants, upon release it was almost immediately adopted as one in its own right.
“The (unofficial) World Cup song has over 7 million views on YouTube and scores 48/100 for popularity on Spotify. While not scoring highly on valence (3.4/10) it has high speechiness (7.37/10), it does well in danceability (6.5/10) and incredibly well in energy (9.7/10). This gives Vindaloo (Nah Nah) 5.41/10 overall.”