Totallympics Open International Song Contest 2022

[Werloc 3,161]

29 minutes ago, dcro said:

Song Duration

 

For today's random statistical analysis, we will take a look at the duration of TISC entries. Specifically, we will focus on the relationship between various national juries and the duration of songs which tend to score points from these juries. Which juries prefer quick action, and which juries like a good-old slow burn?

 

3 minutes and 56 seconds

Following the completion of the 2022 Annual, a total of 656 songs have been presented on the TISC stage. Duration of these 656 songs varies a great deal, but it all averages out at just above 3 minutes and 56 seconds per song. Unlike the Eurovision Song Contest, there are no time limits to be found in the TISC rulebook. It is interesting, however, that the adopted average after the first 18 editions stands at almost exactly a minute longer than the Eurovision limit.

 

Mi Pais vs Kelmti Horra (for now)

The shortest song entered so far has been Uruguay's Mi Pais. Taking just 115 seconds, it is indeed the only sub 2 minutes entry presented to date. Too short for some? Perhaps. Mi Pais placed 29th at the 2017 Open with 32 points.

 

 

On the other side of the spectrum, we find Kelmti Horra representing Tunisia. Taking 6 minutes and 45 seconds (!), it can undoubtedly be classified in the epic category. Kelmti Horra scored 71 points to finish 16th at the 2016 Open. This record is set to be broken this week in Czechia however, as Egypt's 180° takes up a whopping 7 minutes and 19 seconds (excluding intro/outro).

 

 

Finally, who is the Average Joe of the TISC? Well, there have been exactly five songs to date with a duration of 3:56 - Jaadagi Nii (EST, 2014 Open), Geboren um zu Leben (GER, 2014 Open), Crazy For You (CAN, 2015 Annual), Onaj Dan (CRO, 2017 Annual) and most recently Pelan-Pelan Saja (INA, 2019 Open).

 

Song Duration Sweetspot

Today, we would like to focus on finding the song duration sweetspot for every jury. For this purpose, we took a look at the voting history of each jury and calculated the average duration of all songs which have scored points from the said jury. We used the weighted average, so for example, duration of the songs which were awarded 12 points hold 12 times more weight than duration of the songs which were awarded 1 point, and so on.

 

Short and Sweet

So we have crunched the numbers and the observation is as follows. Voting records show that the Venezuelan jury prefers short songs the most with a weighted average of just 3:30. If your entry for the 2022 Open clocks over 4 minutes, then maybe don't expect much from Venezuela. Out of 24 songs which have received points from Venezuela so far, only two clock at over 4 minutes and none goes beyond 5 minutes. Pretty extraordinary, given that the all-time average duration of TISC entries is very nearly 4 minutes exactly. Ironically, Venezuela itself tends to enter fairly long songs into the contests. Their shortest one to date - Sin Ti, 2019 Annual - still clocks at eyebrow-raising 4:57, while the other two (No Te Vas, 2018 Annual and Es Epico, 2022 Open) both go well over 5 minutes! Practice what you preach?

 

Other juries which are statistically most likely to reward shorter songs are Ukraine, Uruguay, Norway, Iran, Indonesia, Spain, Bulgaria, Lebanon. Ukraine should be noted as the jury who statistically awards medals to the shortest songs. Average duration of their medal picks stands at just 3:25.

 

Going the Distance

On the other side of the spectrum, we find Morocco. And Morocco likes it long, very long. Their weighted average stands at whopping 4:16, and the medal picks average at 4:35! 3 out of 5 Morocco's gold medal picks to date clock over 5 minutes, including two winners - Zombie (2014 Open) and Song About Love (2015 Open).

 

Other juries which are statistically most likely to reward longer songs are Guyana, Vietnam, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Egypt, Turkey, Chile, Azerbaijan.

 

Below you can find a table with juries grouped around their weighted average ("sweetspot song duration"). Only the juries taking part in this edition are included. It comes as no surprise that most juries are grouped around the average song duration of 3:56 (even if only Croatia hits that mark exactly). There are pockets of juries to be found around 10 seconds or more away from 3:56. On the shorter side - INA, BUL, ESP, IND, ISR, SLO; and on the longer side - CHI, TUR, EGY, IRL, HUN, DEN, VIE. As outlined above, Venezuela and Ukraine are by far the biggest outliers.

 

Sweetspot Song Duration	Juries
3:30
3:31
3:32
3:33
3:34
3:35
3:36
3:37
3:38
3:39
3:40
3:41
3:42
3:43
3:44
3:45
3:46
3:47
3:48
3:49
3:50
3:51
3:52
3:53
3:54
3:55
3:56
3:57
3:58
3:59
4:00
4:01
4:02
4:03
4:04
4:05
4:06
4:07
4:08
4:09

I'd assume though that for the Annual contest separately, it's closer to three minutes for everyone?  

 

Very rare nowadays to see a 4 minute + song in the pop scene, even alternative music doesn't tend to drag on as long. People don't have the attention span anymore, so the music industry is trying to get you hooked quick before you press the skip button. If you don't reach the first chorus by 30-45 seconds, it's already somewhat of a danger zone.

 

I'm in a bit of a dilemma, where I went to my Spotify liked tracks a couple of months ago and most of them were 4 minutes and longer, but when I'm focusing on my writing (for myself and other artists), the sweet spot has become 2:30-3:30, edging ever so closer to the under 3 minute mark.

 

Some good examples would be some recent pop releases like: 

 

Harry's House by Harry Styles, clocking in at 41m:59s with thirteen songs - two songs over four minutes, the rest close to three.

CHARLIE by Charlie Puth, clocking in at a very low 33m02s with 12 songs - only five songs are over three minutes, Charlie has been spending most of his days on TikTok, so he really knows how to tap into the younger audience.

Midnights by Taylor Swift, clocking in at 44m08s with thirteen songs - only two song over four minutes as well.

 

And before Taylor breaking the Billboard Top 100, the top 10 songs were:

 

"Unholy" by Sam Smith and Kim Petras at 2:36

"Bad Habit" by Steve Lacy at 3:52

"As It Was" by Harry Styles at 2:47

"California Breeze" by Lil Baby at 2:57

"I Like You" by Post Malone and Doja Cat at 3:12

"I Ain't Worried" by One Republic at 2:28

"You Proof" by Morgan Wallen at 2:37

"Forever" by Lil Baby and Fridayy at 2:47

"Super Freaky Girl" by Nicki Minaj at 2:50

"Real Spill" by Lil Baby at 3:18

 

 

Adele is really one of the A-list pop stars that can still transcend any trends, clocking in a 58m18s album with only twelve songs, five of them over 6 minutes, but her first two singles from the album were under 4 minute tracks anyways.

[OlympicIRL 5,527]

3 minutes ago, Werloc said:

I'd assume though that for the Annual contest separately, it's closer to three minutes for everyone?  

 

Very rare nowadays to see a 4 minute + song in the pop scene, even alternative music doesn't tend to drag on as long. People don't have the attention span anymore, so the music industry is trying to get you hooked quick before you press the skip button. If you don't reach the first chorus by 30-45 seconds, it's already somewhat of a danger zone.

 

I'm in a bit of a dilemma, where I went to my Spotify liked tracks a couple of months ago and most of them were 4 minutes and longer, but when I'm focusing on my writing (for myself and other artists), the sweet spot has become 2:30-3:30, edging ever so closer to the under 3 minute mark.

 

Some good examples would be some recent pop releases like: 

 

Harry's House by Harry Styles, clocking in at 41m:59s with thirteen songs - two songs over four minutes, the rest close to three.

CHARLIE by Charlie Puth, clocking in at a very low 33m02s with 12 songs - only five songs are over three minutes, Charlie has been spending most of his days on TikTok, so he really knows how to tap into the younger audience.

Midnights by Taylor Swift, clocking in at 44m08s with thirteen songs - only two song over four minutes as well.

 

And before Taylor breaking the Billboard Top 100, the top 10 songs were:

 

"Unholy" by Sam Smith and Kim Petras at 2:36

"Bad Habit" by Steve Lacy at 3:52

"As It Was" by Harry Styles at 2:47

"California Breeze" by Lil Baby at 2:57

"I Like You" by Post Malone and Doja Cat at 3:12

"I Ain't Worried" by One Republic at 2:28

"You Proof" by Morgan Wallen at 2:37

"Forever" by Lil Baby and Fridayy at 2:47

"Super Freaky Girl" by Nicki Minaj at 2:50

"Real Spill" by Lil Baby at 3:18

 

 

Adele is really one of the A-list pop stars that can still transcend any trends, clocking in a 58m18s album with only twelve songs, five of them over 6 minutes, but her first two singles from the album were under 4 minute tracks anyways.

 

That's a bit of a shock for me.... I always thought most mainstream songs are closer to 4 minutes long. Guess now I know why I don't really dig Eurovision songs since my voting pattern trends to songs over 4 minutes

[dcro 10,210]

16 minutes ago, Werloc said:

CHARLIE by Charlie Puth, clocking in at a very low 33m02s with 12 songs - only five songs are over three minutes, Charlie has been spending most of his days on TikTok, so he really knows how to tap into the younger audience.

In b4 the Venezuelan juror is actually a big time TikToker.

Edited November 2, 2022 by dcro

[Werloc 3,161]

3 minutes ago, OlympicIRL said:

 

That's a bit of a shock for me.... I always thought most mainstream songs are closer to 4 minutes long. Guess now I know why I don't really dig Eurovision songs since my voting pattern trends to songs over 4 minutes

In regards to Eurovision, I started writing songs since 11 y.o. and they used to drag on for a very long time, lots of 4-5 minute songs early on. 

 

I grew up in the day & age where 4 minutes were the standard, especially in the indie, rock, alternative scene that had one of its peak popularities in late 90s, early 2000s

 

As I grew older and gained more experience as a songwriter, I was able to cut down on the time for the songs that I wrote, but I still remember questioning the Eurovision 3 minute rule, because it was impossible to tell a good story in three minutes, right?

 

Many Eurovision songs have to cut second verses, perhaps they skip the pre-chorus, not many of them tend to have a bridge and double-chorus at the end has become less and less popular over time, to give yourself time for more creative decisions in the first half of the song. 

 

Cut to 2020 when I had to write 24 songs for Eurovision 2021, I found myself so comfortable in a three minute format that I had trouble writing longer songs after Eurovision was done

 

All in all, we've selected the tracks for my album a couple of months ago and only two songs extend over 4 minutes if there are no unsuspected changes. So it really feels that I had to evolve with the times, because I honestly remember my younger self with a mindset that four minutes is the best length for a song if you want to tell a compelling story.

 

Nowadays there's less & less of a necessity for a compelling story as it's mostly important how it flows musically and you having a very good 8-20 second hook that will get you places on TikTok & Instagram stories.

 

 

[dcro 10,210]

@Werloc You are absolutely correct. And the difference is pretty big.

 

Average Annual Song - 3:47

Average Open Song - 4:05

[dcro 10,210]

Speaking of song duration, I stumbled onto this. This was created after the 2019 Open, I think, so not exactly up to date, but makes for an interesting reading. Songs of length 3:30-4:00 tend to score slightly more points than those around (3:00-3:30, then 4:00-4:30, and then 2:30-3:00/4:30-5:00/5:00-5:30).

 

And then we get a really interesting spike beyond 5:30. These seem to be very appreciated, but then again the number of songs going beyond five and a half minutes is probably not that big.  So the stats may be deceiving.

 

Songs shorter than 2:30 get butchered apparently.

 

Spoiler

 

Edited November 2, 2022 by dcro

[Werloc 3,161]

1 hour ago, dcro said:

Speaking of song duration, I stumbled onto this. This was created after the 2019 Open, I think, so not exactly up to date, but makes for an interesting reading. Songs of length 3:30-4:00 tend to score slightly more points than those around (3:00-3:30, then 4:00-4:30, and then 2:30-3:00/4:30-5:00/5:00-5:30).

 

And then we get a really interesting spike beyond 5:30. These seem to be very appreciated, but then again the number of songs going beyond five and a half minutes is probably not that big.  So the stats may be deceiving.

 

Songs shorter than 2:30 get butchered apparently.

 

  Hide contents

 

I went to my Spotify playlist fully assuming to not find much if any songs above 5 minutes and I was surprised

 

DiHaj "Complain" and Daft Punk's "Instant Crush" both land in the 5:30-6:00 category, which could explain why this time frame looks good on the graph.

 

But you have to take these stats with a grain of salt, both because the sample size of 5+ minutes songs is most certainly massively massively smaller than songs between 3:00-4:00, which probably would make 60% of entries alone. 

 

The 0:00-2:30 sample size is probably like three songs and since I remember two of them, I'm not surprised

 

Lastly, if these stats were garnered through the use of Youtube, I'd imagine that 30s+ credit outros were not taken into account and were not substracted from the song length making some songs longer than they were. Nor were the entries that had entire movie scenes in the middle of their songs or that one entry (don't remember if it was approved) that was a full mash up of two completely different songs. 

 

To really get ahold of some results based analysis, we'd need a stats connoisseur to take the top 5 from every contest and then see which song length is mostly preferential and accumulated the most success. I'd imagine it probably being the 3:30-4:00 sweet spot, or more likely 3:15-3:40 for Annual and 3:40-4:15 for Open.

[dcro 10,210]

7 hours ago, Werloc said:

I went to my Spotify playlist fully assuming to not find much if any songs above 5 minutes and I was surprised

 

DiHaj "Complain" and Daft Punk's "Instant Crush" both land in the 5:30-6:00 category, which could explain why this time frame looks good on the graph.

 

But you have to take these stats with a grain of salt, both because the sample size of 5+ minutes songs is most certainly massively massively smaller than songs between 3:00-4:00, which probably would make 60% of entries alone. 

 

The 0:00-2:30 sample size is probably like three songs and since I remember two of them, I'm not surprised

 

Lastly, if these stats were garnered through the use of Youtube, I'd imagine that 30s+ credit outros were not taken into account and were not substracted from the song length making some songs longer than they were. Nor were the entries that had entire movie scenes in the middle of their songs or that one entry (don't remember if it was approved) that was a full mash up of two completely different songs. 

 

To really get ahold of some results based analysis, we'd need a stats connoisseur to take the top 5 from every contest and then see which song length is mostly preferential and accumulated the most success. I'd imagine it probably being the 3:30-4:00 sweet spot, or more likely 3:15-3:40 for Annual and 3:40-4:15 for Open.

Some intros/outros were taken out. Probably not all, but certainly some of the more glaring ones. There was also one Algerian submission which had two songs in one video. The second one was ignored, even if I remember not ignoring it during the contest itself. What a weird submission that was. 

 

It's not easy to determine duration of each song, but then again the songs are submitted via Youtube videos so it's all part of the game and presentation. For example, I can remember some users not being happy about Blinding Lights very brief intro and intercuts.

[Werloc 3,161]

1 hour ago, dcro said:

Some intros/outros were taken out. Probably not all, but certainly some of the more glaring ones. There was also one Algerian submission which had two songs in one video. The second one was ignored, even if I remember not ignoring it during the contest itself. What a weird submission that was. 

 

It's not easy to determine duration of each song, but then again the songs are submitted via Youtube videos so it's all part of the game and presentation. For example, I can remember some users not being happy about Blinding Lights very brief intro and intercuts.

I thought that it was Algeria, but didn't want to go in on them since I wasn't sure   One of the weirdest submissions.

 

It's very unlikely that I score 6 minute songs well, because those that go 6, 7 minutes and more are usually bad in the very first 30 seconds and you can't expect me to listen through the whole thing and do it 5-7 more times until I decide what points it could get. It makes me think that those artists were surrounded by 'yes men' that wouldn't warn them that the song isn't very good, yet they made a 7 minute version from it, when it could've been less painful as three, or not released at all  

 

The only way I see 6 minute songs doing really well, it's what's somewhat prominent in the music industry as the album closing track, which usually have a lot of different motives to not get boring, long intros-outros, build-up and very keen on instrumental parts, it's always interchanging to introduce the listener with something new every 15-20 seconds. 

 

Some of the best examples that come to mind right now would be Harry Styles "Fine Line", All The Luck In The World "Abhainn", Adele's "Love Is A Game", "Goodnight, Travel Well" by The Killers.

 

It's mostly used as a treat for fans and for artistic expression, but it's at the end of the album, to not disrupt the flow of the album and to weed out the people that don't like you enough to get through a 6-7 minute song from you. If it's your very first time listening/being introduced to an artist, the last thing you want to hear is a 7 minute rendition and it's not the type of song that helps you discover an artist, because no radio, nor playlist will ever pick it up. 

 

It's not an album ending track surprisingly, but I'll also use this opportunity to shout-out "Spanish Sahara" by The Foals. Brilliant way to use 6+ minutes, not only the lyrics, but the music tells a story as well. Not surprised it blew up after getting picked up as soundtrack for "Life Is Strange". 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Werloc

[Benolympique 2,398]

BELGIUM

Angéle - Bruxelles je t'aime -

 

We don't have New York's towers
We don't have daylight six months out of the year
We don't have Beaubourg or the Seine
We're not the city of love
But hey, you see

At nightfall, the sky will surely cover a tempest
But after the storm, people will party with beers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brussels, I love you, Brussels, I love you
I had missed you
Brussels, I love you, Brussels, I love you
You're my favourite
Brussels, I love you, Brussels, I love you
I had missed you
You're the most beautiful, yes, you're the most beautiful (Hey)


Paris calls me when I want to go home
When I miss the grey sky and the rain
I feel better when I see you
Other cities are beautiful but I only think about you
When I miss my country and my city, I don't forget you


We don't have the longest of histories
We haven't always won, we know it
And usually, I have the attitude, even if it's hard, to keep hope
When we're not in first place


Les Marolles, Flagey, Saint-Gilles
Laeken, to whom I owe my name

Edited November 3, 2022 by Benolympique