The Science and Sentiment Behind 'Eastern Rosellas' Viral Catchiness

It's the viral song about a beloved Australian bird that you can't get out of your head.

But what makes Eastern Rosellas, performed by Miles Phillips and his dad Joel, so catchy?

The hit song has clocked up thousands of likes and reposts on social media and inspired covers from across the world, including Australian musicians Meg Washington, Ball Park Music and Ben Lee.

If you ask the experts, there is a distinct formula that lodges the one-minute thirty-nine-second song in the minds of people everywhere.

Musicians, however, simply believe it might just be the wholesome antidote we all need at the moment.

Childhood innocence

One of the artists to cover the song is Aussie musician Ben Lee.

According to Lee, the way Eastern Rosellas has taken off says a lot about what the Australian audience is craving right now.

"It's really interesting how music and art in general have become increasingly corporatised over recent decades," he said.

"We often feel like the algorithm isn't just picking what we get to consume, but in a way it's influencing what's getting made.

"There's something about this experience that we're having with Eastern Rosellas where it's connecting us back to this childlike innocence and the reason we love songs and music in the first place.

Seven-year-old Miles told the ABC's BTN he came up with the idea for the song while feeding the birds at his grandparents' house on Raymond Island.

In a world where AI is encroaching on the arts, Lee said the human side to the song offers something a computer can't provide.

"Something like this is completely unpredictable," he said.

Repetition and relaxation

Music cognition researcher and professor of music at the University of New South Wales, Emery Schubert, said there might actually be a bit of science to go along with Lee's theory on how a composer can get an audience hooked.

"There's a very simple reason why songs are potentially good for earworm creation, and that's because there's a section of the song that is an exact repetition," he said.

"It's a very simple formula and a lot of songs do use it.

Professor Schubert said this repetition, known in the music world as "contiguous repetition", is the only characteristic a songwriter needs to make a track earworm-able.

"A segment of the song is exactly repeated immediately after the first playing of that segment," Professor Schubert said.

"That will jump into people's minds because, even when they're not thinking, in particular when they're not really thinking hard about anything in particular, that's most likely to come up."

Colour in darkness

While experts might argue that there is a magic formula to create an earworm on loop in your mind, Lee said the timing and authenticity have played a larger role than any musical pattern could.

"There's something about how dark the present moment is, whether it's politically [or] economically," he said.

"Things are quite unnerving for people."