Fifty years later, popular music seems to have moved in the opposite direction. Once artists and producers figure out what makes a commercial hit – from its length and structure to its rhythm, melody and how quickly it reaches a catchy hook – songs can be optimised to reproduce them. This tendency is especially pronounced today because streaming platforms allow millions of songs to compete for our attention. This creates intense pressure to stick to formulas that are known to work rather than risk experimenting with something different. As a result, the musical landscape becomes filled with songs that sound alike. This is an example of what my colleagues and I call hyperselection in a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. This idea refers to what happens when competition becomes so intense, and we become so adept at identifying and optimising what succeeds, that we repeatedly select for the same characteristics while alternatives are eliminated.