Unless you have the willpower of a steely bison (what does that mean? idgaf, it’s 5:15pm on a Friday), exercising without a solid playlist of bangers to egg you on is a chore.
Curating the ultimate workout playlist is tough, though – so many fkn classics to choose from – which is why we’re grateful some data cruncher has done the hard yards for us.
A man named Walt Hickey, from statistical analysis site FiveThirtyEight, used a massive data set from Spotify programmer Paul Lamere to isolate every single playlist with the word “workout” in the title. Then he culled the playlists that didn’t ft. at least one hours’ worth of music, as well as any playlists that didn’t cop at least one play per week.
After narrowing everything down, he built the perfect sweat-it-out playlist around it the toones that get the most play time.
Presenting the 10 most listened to songs while exercising – ever, on Spotify:
1. “Panda” by Desiigner, featured on 5,776 playlists
2. “‘Till I Collapse” by Eminem, featured on 5,110 playlists
3. “One Dance” by Drake, featured on 4,954 playlists
4. “Jumpman” by Drake, featured on 4,346 playlists
5. “Power” by Kanye West, featured on 3,921 playlists
5. “Lose Yourself – Soundtrack Version” by Eminem, featured on 3,909 playlists
7. “Don’t Let Me Down” by The Chainsmokers, featured on 3,810 playlists
8. “Stronger” by Kanye West, featured on 3,771 playlists
9. “Work” by Rihanna, featured on 3,748 playlists
10. “I Took a Pill in Ibiza – Seeb Remix” by Mike Posner, featured on 3,680 playlists
Obvi most of those tracks hover around the 130 BPM range in the pop or high-energy hip-hop categories, which makes total sense: the faster the better when you’re trying to ignore the burn in your glutes.
As for the artists that most commonly pop up on workout playlists, you’re looking at:
1. Drake
2. Kanye West
3. Eminem
4. Jay Z
5. Rihanna
6. Calvin Harris
7. Lil’ Wayne
8. Future
9. David Guetta
10. Flo Rida
GET IT AND SWEAT IT, M8S.
Source: FiveThirtyEight.
Photo: Anchorman.
