If, as a famous study by Microsoft suggests, attention spans have shrunk from 12 to eight seconds – a whopping 33 per cent – since 2000, then where on Earth does that leave the pop song?

Technology originally dictated how long a single could be: the first 78rpm singles could accommodate three minutes and 30 seconds of audio on each side. Even though the 45rpm version that pre-CD generations grew up with was more generous in terms of length, brevity became the norm. (The mafia’s shady involvement in the US jukebox industry is also cited as one cause of singles’ length in the 1950s and 1960s, as they sought to maximise plays and profits.) “From Me To You”, The Beatles’ first UK number one, was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it affair, at only one minute and 56 seconds. Mr Adam Faith, one of this country’s first bona fide teen idols, managed only one minute and 38 seconds on “What Do You Want?”, the shortest UK number one single of all time.

The pop single grew in length in subsequent decades. “Bohemian Rhapsody” clocked in at five minutes and 55 seconds in 1975. By 1998, Madonna’s hit “Frozen” was luxuriating at six minutes and 12 seconds. Oasis bettered that in the same year, with “All Around The World” notching up nine minutes and 38 seconds. Talk about outstaying your welcome. Surely, brief is better?

The classic song structure – verse, bridge, chorus, repeat – that ruled the airwaves from the 1960s onwards is giving way to songs that often sound like a succession of standalone snippets. But the aim remains the same: to lure in the listener, and keep them engaged. A song listened to for less than 30 seconds on Spotify doesn’t register as a play, and therefore generates no income for the songwriter, performer or record label. So, the modern hit songwriter has to work fast, and that often means, to the dismay of older music consumers, dispensing with the chorus altogether.

Ah, the chorus – the moment in a song where everything explodes into technicolour, giving the release that the verse and bridge have built towards, and the section of the song that still nags away at you years later. “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus,” as the old saying had it. Well, it’s time to throw some flowers on its grave, and embrace its replacement: the hook.

Songs such as Ms Billie Eilish’s hit “Bad Guy” and Bad Bunny’s “Si Veo A Tu Mamá” connect with streamers because the immediacy is, well, immediate. Never mind the chorus. Instead, hook after hook, each of them is readymade to soundtrack memes, gifs and TikTok clips. And – though many writers, especially those who perform their own material, would argue with this – if the purpose of the song is to grab your attention and reward it with instant gratification, why would they risk testing your patience with something that hangs around longer than it needs to?

The opening bars of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” are immediately identifiable. But the song doesn’t linger: one minute and 53 seconds later, the next track on your playlist will click into place. 24kGoldn’s song “Mood” grabs you from the off, with an earworm guitar riff and – get this – an actual chorus, which arrives a mere 10 seconds in. In each case, job done.

For older generations, raised on anything from “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah” to “I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky”, this represents not progress but the final triumph of commerce over art. No wonder they navigate this new world warily – and cling to the comforts of an old-fashioned chorus. My younger daughter, who has just turned 10, is having none of it. To me, it can sometimes seem as if her choice of song, or hook, is dictated solely by its potential for soundtracking a dance move she films herself doing, to share with her friends and followers. Click, click, click, she goes, sometimes sticking with a track for no more than 15 seconds.

But the joy this form of music consumption brings her is palpable. Many of us ridiculed Mr Justin Bieber’s brazen bid for TikTok ubiquity with his risibly reductive track “Yummy” (an indulgent three minutes and 28 seconds), but the strategy worked. Ditto Drake with the pitiful “Toosie Slide” (a real throwback, time-wise, at four minutes and seven seconds). My daughter loves both.

Bieber’s latest album, Justice, could be a case study for what songwriting means needs to achieve in this new, streaming and social media-led landscape. Of its 16 tracks, only six breach the three-minute mark. And that lengthy track-listing points to another unavoidable reality: albums by huge chart artists, as opposed to those by acts whose principle aim is to make an artistic statement, have become increasingly incoherent and often sound like a digital jukebox. It’s a suck-it-and-see approach – the sonic equivalent of throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Is this cause for despair? I don’t think so. It’s always been this way, it’s just that the tools and the means of distribution have changed. Short can still be sweet. A hook can have as mighty (and memorable) an impact as a chorus. “Bad Guy” is a brilliant song. So are “Old Town Road” and “Mood”. And the gradual reduction from the old standard length of three minutes and 30 seconds to an average of two minutes, according to a recent study by Samsung, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If a song is great, brevity doesn’t threaten its greatness. On the contrary, it can often enhance it, by leaving you wanting more.

Yes, I sometimes watch my daughter and it’s as if she’s a dervish on a trolley dash through a supermarket that sells songs only (not a bad description of Spotify, now that I think about it); her experience of music can be summed up by the word: “Next!” But the songs she listens to (however briefly) form a bonding agent with her peer group every bit as strong as mine once did.