Throughout the history of pop music, internal repetition—the repetition of a word or phrase in the middle of a sentence—has been virtually a guarantee that I will like a song, from “pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty Peggy Sue” to the Supremes’ “baby, baby/baby don’t leave me”to “I can’t get no/I can’t get no/no satisfaction/no satisfaction” to “Little Willy/Willy won’t/go home” to “please don’t stop the/please don’t stop the music” to today’s Taio Cruz hit, “I’m only gonna break, break your/break, break your heart.”

People with normal good taste may complain about the repetition in some of these songs. That’s okay, I can usually find a million or so others who agree with me. Internal repetition is like trans fats for songwriting. It may be a lyricist’s cheap trick (and, hey, “didn’t I/didn’t I/didn’t I see you crying”?), but it makes everything so much catchier.

Internal repetition goes back to the very beginnings of the rock era, starting with Bill Haley & the Comets’ promise to “rock, rock, rock ‘till broad daylight/we’re gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.” It’s thought of as a bubblegum songwriter’s construct, but the critically acclaimed have availed themselves of it, too, from Peter Gabriel (who used “my heart going boom/boom/boom” on “Solsbury Hill” before going for the lyrical “sledge, sledge, sledgehammer” a few years later) to Dramarama’s “[I’ll Give You] Anything, Anything.” At least two of the most enduring ’60s titles have internal repetition, although in this case they’re nonsense syllables—the “sha-la-la-la-la-la-la” of “Brown Eyed Girl” and the title itself of “Do Wah Diddy Diddy.”

In the early ’90s, when I was doing A&R for a Hip-Hop label, I made my co-workers wince by signing two records from New Orleans that were—like the rest of the “bounce music” genre happening there at the time—heavy on repetition. (That one of the songs was about boogers was just an additional provocation.) But every time Rihanna asks “where they at/where they at/where they at” toward the end of “Hard,” I still smile knowing that artists are influenced by bounce music nearly 20 years later.

That didn’t mean that repetition lost its power to tick people off, off, off. D4L’s “Laffy Taffy” (“shake that laffy taffy/that laffy taffy”) provoked pretty much the same reaction as those bounce records, except on a national scale. In the long history of dance-driven novelty records, “Laffy Taffy” infuriated people in a way that “Mashed Potato Time” or “The Cha-Cha Slide” never did.

And yet, five years later, repetition plus sparseness has become a defining sound at R&B and Top 40. “Rude Boy,” Rihanna’s follow-up to “Hard” and the likely biggest hit from “Rated R” is one internal repetition after another (“come here rude boy/boy,” “take it, take it/baby, baby/take it, take it, love me, love me,” “boy I want, want, want/what you want, want, want”). The Black Eyed Peas’ “Imma Be” is their take on Southern Hip-Hop, although with the canny addition of a drastic tempo change that serves as a relief valve at the end.

So I decided to see just how much repetition there was in today’s songwriting by looking at the current Top 40 and Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop charts:

The No. 1 pop song in the country begins with an internal repetition—Lady Gaga’s “hello/hello, baby” in “Telephone.”

The No. 2 pop song is Black Eyed Peas, which starts by repeating the title phrase twice, then goes for the internal repetition, “I’mma be/I’mma be/I’mma, I’mma, I’mma be.”

On the Mainstream Top 40 chart, at least 25 out of the top 30 songs have some sort of internal repetition in the first two minutes. A few are fleeting (Train’s “hey, hey, hey” on “Hey Soul Sister” or Daughtry’s “love ever after/after the life we once knew” on “Life After You”). Others, like Taio Cruz’s “Break Your Heart,” Iyaz’s “Replay” or David Guetta & Akon’s “Sexy Chick” are more obvious.

Of the other five songs in the top 30, meanwhile, two have obvious repetition of another sort – the consecutively repeated hook. There’s no internal repetition on Adam Lambert’s “Whatya Want From Me” but with the title phrase happening so many times at the end of the chorus, there doesn’t really need to be.

Then I went to the R&B chart, where 24 out of the top 30 use internal repetition and another four repeat the full hook. Jay-Z’s “On To The Next One” has two different chants of the title phrase going on at one time, so the lack of repetition within a sentence hardly matters. Ludacris’ “How Low” reinforces its repetition with a Smurf voice. But I put that one in the internal repetition camp anyway because of the secondary “go low/go low” hook.

Is this a problem for anybody? Not for record buyers—of the top 10 songs on the iTunes Music Store, only Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now” doesn’t prominently employ repetition. Is the combined repetition and melodic starkness in Urban contributing to any of its PPM issues—especially with adults? Well, Top 40 is as repetitious and enjoying its best adult acceptance in more than a decade.

That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t seek out songs like “Need You Now” that stand out amidst the repetition. “Need You Now” has plenty of songwriters tricks of its own; (the almost-internal-rhyme of “quarter after one/and I’m all alone/and I need you now,” for one), but they’re different tricks.

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“Lyric repetition … makes the song more successful and that much more well-remembered. Last week, I stopped at the Grover Cleveland Rest Area on the New Jersey Turnpike, where they play Top 40 and hit songs on their PA system. ‘Rude Boy’ was playing and people were actually walking by and singing it.” – Robert Cohen, Voice of America (retired), Washington, D.C.

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“It’s those magical key phrases gently whispered over and over again which most deeply touch our hearts and speak to our souls. Let’s review one of the most romantic standards ever written – a tender, timeless tale of true love and endless devotion: ‘A-well-a everybody’s heard/about the bird/B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word…’” – Gary Theroux, who actually included the entire lyric of “Surfin’ Bird” by the Trashmen (and was one of several readers who cited the garage rock classic).

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“Are you crazy? I mean crazy crazy. Come on and get with it crazy, get with the program, really come on and get with it. I don’t hear it. Nope don’t hear it at all. Not at all … crazy.” – Steve Suter, APD/MD WLMG (Magic 101.9) New Orleans.

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“Repetition helps us to remember things: birthdays, addition, numbers, letters, phone numbers, everything. There is a reason Classic radio stations exist: to repeat the things we like and the memories associated with them. Repeated lyrics burn into our brains. I have a two-year-old at home and he watches the same DVDs over and over, and learns every lesson that Elmo teaches. He also asks me to play the same AC/DC songs over and over and knows them by heart. ‘Thunderstruck’ again, anyone?” – Steve King, PD KDKB Phoenix

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“As always, great article on repetition in songs, songs. I just posted a blog entry on Hypebot about Justin Bieber and showed that repetition is certainly essential to the success of his singles. As you also know, I devoted a whole chapter in Futurehit.DNA to repetition. I go into numerous reasons why this works, but certainly short attention spans are one of them. Also, as for ‘Need You Now,’ I have to disagree. It does have repetition, just not successive repetition. In each chorus, the title is repeated three times. That may not seem like a lot in the pop chart against these other songs. But in the Country world, where repetition is not nearly as prevalent, this has a lot of repetition. I guess it’s all relative.” – Jay Frank, Senior VP Music Strategy, CMT.

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“One of my favorite records of the past few years, ‘Trouble’ by Ray LaMontagne, is a great, great record with a lot of repetition.” – Lee Zapis, Zapis Capital

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“No no/no/no no no no no no.” – Frank Bell, Keymarket VP of Programming chimes in with the opener of the Human Beinz’ still-oft-used-in-spots ’60s garage hit “Nobody But Me.”

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“’You say goodbye, I say hello/hello, hello.’”—A-Ware/Music Master president Joseph Knapp

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“My best example is ‘I Love A Rainy Night’ by Eddie Rabbitt. And you still haven’t answered the question ‘I wonder, wonder who/who wrote the book of love?’” – Dr. Bruce, KFTX Corpus Christi, Texas

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“Hey, Sean, do twin fiddles count as repetition?” – Bob Glasco, Glasco Media

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“I like the repetition of Public Enemy’s Chuck D in [Ludacris’] ‘How Low.’ That sample got a lot of mileage for him. Remember Simon Harris’ ‘Bass [How Low Can You Go]?’ None of my jocks at the Bounce knew the sample, including my MD. I was shocked.” – Rob Basile, former PD CJCH (the Bounce) Halifax, N.S.

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“One thing for sure. It could always be worse.” – Johnny Marks

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“I got one wayback! ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ from Bill Withers: ‘I know, I know, I know, I know…’(repeat 22 more times)!” – Dave Tomm

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“Doesn’t the repeitition and to some degree sparseness go much farther back the N.O. bounce to where it always does? James Brown and his mid 60’s material like ‘Papa ’s Got A Brand New Bag?’” – Steve Sobczuk, Waterloo, Ont.