We first heard the classic refrain “Here we are now, entertain us,” from Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit back in 1991, but this week the song has been ruled by scientists as the most iconic one in the history of music.

The Kurt Cobain-written song is, according to Dr Mick Grierson of Goldsmiths University in London, the best of 50 of the biggest hits of all time, examining all the songs to see what features they had in common.

Starting by compiling a literature review of the ‘all-time best’ polls from music publications, including various newspapers, Rolling Stone, VH-1, NME and Q magazines, the research used music software to investigate the key characteristics of the music, including key, beats per minute, chord variety, lyrical content, timbral variety, and sonic varience.

“We looked at a range of measures for each song and compared them to see if there were similarities in these recordings which occurred less in other songs. We found the most significant thing these songs have in common is that most of them use sound in very varied, dynamic ways when compared to other records,” stated Grierson.  

Smells Like Teen Spirit was deemed the top song in the study, containing most the key elements that made other songs popular, with Imagine by John Lennon coming in second, and Irish band U2's One as number three.

But what do you think? Newstalk Life wants to know how you would rank the top 10 songs to see if you agree with Dr Grierson. Take a moment to vote up and down the songs from the interactive poll below:

If you cannot see the listed songs, please refresh the page.