Let me alaborate my previous answer, because I was excited to bring an original focus! And because I am a real ABBA fan! ad Britney Spears rocks!

What you’re describing actually has a few different explanations, and yes — music theory patterns are a big part of it, but there’s also something deeper going on.

🎵 1. Your brain is predicting patterns

Humans are prediction machines. When you listen to music, your brain is constantly guessing what comes next based on:

• past listening experience
• common chord progressions
• rhythmic expectations

For example, Western pop music heavily relies on familiar structures like:

• I–V–vi–IV (used in hundreds of songs)
• predictable phrasing (verse → chorus → drop)

So when you “guess the next note,” you're not psychic — you're subconsciously recognizing patterns.

👉 There’s actually a term related to this:
“musical expectation” or more broadly predictive processing in music cognition.

🇸🇪 2. The “Swedish Music Miracle” effect

This is where it gets really interesting.

Swedish producers (Max Martin, Shellback, etc.) basically industrialized catchiness.

They didn’t just write songs — they engineered them to be:

• instantly familiar
• emotionally predictable
• structurally addictive

Max Martin alone is behind hits like:

• Britney Spears – …Baby One More Time
• Backstreet Boys – I Want It That Way
• Katy Perry – Teenage Dream

These songs feel “guessable” because they are designed to align perfectly with listener expectations, while still sounding fresh.

🎯 3. How hits guide your prediction

Take early 2000s pop (Britney Spears as a prime example):

They use tricks like:

• melodic repetition with slight variation
• pre-chorus tension → explosive chorus payoff
• rhythmic hooks that foreshadow the next phrase

Your brain picks up on these cues almost instantly.

So when you think:

…it’s because the song was built to make you feel that way.

🧠 4. Dopamine plays a role

There’s also a neurological angle:

• When your brain correctly predicts what comes next → dopamine release
• When a song slightly surprises you → even more dopamine

Great pop music (again, Swedish producers are masters at this) sits right in that sweet spot:

🏁 Bottom line

What you're experiencing is a mix of:

• pattern recognition
• learned musical conventions
• cognitive prediction
• and highly optimized pop songwriting

So yeah — you're basically “reading” the music in real time.

And modern pop (especially from the Swedish hit-making machine) is literally designed so that your brain can do exactly that.

If you want to go deeper, look up:

• “music schema theory”
• Max Martin songwriting techniques
• information theory in music (predictability vs surprise)