Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction

by Derek Thompson,
Psychology Today, February 21, 2017

“Rock Around the Clock,” by Bill Haley and His Comets, appeared on the B-side of “Thirteen Women” in 1954, spent one week on the Billboard charts and disappeared. A year later, after the song opened the film "Blackboard Jungle," it became the top-selling single in the United States.