WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE LIKE TO LISTEN TO SAD MUSIC?

Still Here- Digital Daggers. Click on the video to listen to this song.

How do you feel listening to this song? Does this song make you feel emotional? Neutral? A lot of people tend to listen to sad music when they’re feeling sad or upset about particular life situations. In fact, it is thought that sad music tends to help people accept difficult life events or regulate and understand their feelings of sadness. For example, when I was dating my partner long distance, I would listen to Not Ok by Kygo and Chelsea Cutler. Honestly, I could only relate to the lyric “7 months, 2 weeks and 7 days since I left but who’s counting anyway?”. Just listening to these lyrics helped me focus on the music instead of the anxious thoughts from being so far away.

All through my life, I have always enjoyed listening to sad music, but I never pay attention to the lyrics unless I am in a negative mood. I’ve always wondered, why do we like to listen to sad music if it’s supposed to have a negative association?

Research on Why We Like Sad Music:

Kawakami, Furukawa, Katahira, and Okanoya (2013) researched why people choose to listen to sad music. When listening to sad music, we expect the music to make us sadder, but how do we actually feel when we’re listening to this sad music? Sad music is normally perceived to be in minor key, dark timbres, and a slower tempo. In this study, researchers hypothesized that the way we perceive ourselves to feel when listening to music, especially in minor key, will not be the same way as we actually feel about the music, differentiating between how we expect to feel and how we actually feel. Perceiving music is what we expect to feel, while feelings describe our emotions in the moment. Listening to sad music may make us feel more positive compared to the way we expect to feel when listening to sad music since the way we perceive emotions is not always the same as what we actually feel.

To test this hypothesis, researchers Kawakami et al., asked music experts and non-music experts to describe how they felt and how they thought others would feel about a song in the normal key and a minor key by rating a list of provided words. The chosen songs were unknown to the listeners, as to avoid any preexisting memories, and played in both major and minor keys. The ranked words were coded into categories of tragic, heightened, romantic, and blithe emotions.

These are the words that participants rated from 1–4 to describe how they felt or how they thought others would feel when listening to a song. La Separation in minor key by Mikhali Glinka is one of the songs that researchers used in this study.

Researchers found that participants perceived the sad music to be tragic but were more likely to feel romantic and blithe emotions while listening. Tragic emotions include gloomy and miserable feelings, romantic emotions include fascinated and in love, and blithe emotions include merry and animated. Overall, the participants did feel unhappy when listening to the sad music but not to the same degree to which they expected to feel sad. Interestingly, music majors were more likely to experience positive feelings and less likely to experience negative feelings compared to non-music experts. Why do we think this is? Could it be that music is a type of art, so music experts may have a greater appreciation for the intrinsic art? Also, the music given to the participants did not have lyrics, so maybe music experts are more used to listening to classical music in general which gives them more pleasant feelings. Regardless of one’s musical experience, there was still a difference between how one perceived music and how they felt about the music.

Limitations of This Research:

However, when looking at the results of this experiment, there were some limitations in this study that may make readers question their specific conclusions. For example, since participants had to rate 62 words, there could have been some specific emotional memory loss for the words at the end of the list. Instead, researchers should have used a continuous measure, like asking participants how they felt while listening to the song instead of after. Future studies should look at emotional response by looking at one’s physiology such as heart rate which may lead to stronger data, instead of just participants rating the music based on what they think they are feeling.

So Why Do Many People Like to Listen to Sad Music?

It was found that music in minor keys were judged as sadder, but people seemed to enjoy this music more. But why would we want to actively listen to music we think will put as in a negative mood? As the previous research showed, we do feel sad when listening to tragic music, but we also experience more positive emotions than expected, so people may choose to listen to sad music and actually enjoy it. For example, I listen to “Show Me” by Gavin Haley on repeat. I listen to this song no matter my mood, because I enjoy the music although it is a sad song. Why do I feel so comfortable listening to sad music on a daily basis?

This effect may be due to sweet anticipation because listeners experience songs that they think will associate with their mood. Sweet anticipation is positive feelings that come from one’s conscious thoughts when thinking about the future, as defined by David Huron who is a music cognition and psychology of music professor at Ohio State University. So if I anticipate feeling sad with this music, then my expected feelings align with the song I chose to listen to. This may make my experience more positive since my emotional expectations were fulfilled. However, are you ever in a certain mood and when you hear a song that conflicts with that mood, you immediately feel inclined to change that song? With sad music, we want to feel sad, so confirming our emotions and investing our thoughts into music may ground us. In the long run, we get to feel sad, which makes us feel more satisfied and experience more positive emotions.

However, why did the participants in the study feel more positive emotions than expected, even when they did not seek out sad music? I really think that people must be able to analyze and understand how they’re feeling in the moment to experience their emotion, which is why people may listen to sad music to balance out these emotions.

What About Songs That are Ambiguous? Not Clearly Happy or Sad?

Does music have any real implications to help one’s well-being? If not, then why do we feel more positive feelings when listening to sad music? Maybe it’s because we are able to ground ourselves in the music, distracting our thoughts from what is really bothering us. Although I have mainly been talking about sad music, songs aren’t just pleasant or unpleasant. Instead, there are songs that can embrace neutrality or pieces of happiness and sadness. Thinking about sad music, we should distinct between sad music and lyrics because many songs may have happy and sad features of both.

Listen to the first 12 seconds of this song.

How do you feel when listening to the first 12 seconds of this song? Happy? Neutral? Good Things Fall Apart by ILLENIUM and Jon Bellion starts off with a major chord of chill and happy music. However, how do you feel about this song when you listen to it with the lyrics?

The same? Sad? Indifferent? I find that a lot of research doesn’t focus on ambiguous music. As someone who doesn’t listen to lyrics, I love this song. It makes me feel excited and happy. The tune is upbeat and in a major key. This tune’s melody seems to be uplifting and encouraging, giving the push to want to dance along with the song. However, the lyrics are about a breakup and the artist not being able to understand how they broke up, giving how good the relationship used to be. How would we perceive this music versus how the music makes us feel? Ambiguous music seems to be a commonality in our society as well, so how do people react when they hear music like this? Music is complex, because this song sounds happy, but actually has a very depressing tone and coveys an overall sad lyrical message. But why are over 12 million people listening to this song? Does it make them sad or happy? How about both?

A lot of features of music are important in deciding if we enjoy it: our emotions, the genre, lyrics, major or minor key, or the ability for us to appreciate the message. Overall, I don’t think there is a direct reason to why some people enjoy listening to sad music and others do not. Music is influenced by our emotions and personal events, so when selecting artists to listen to, choosing to listen to sad music can also bring us pleasure. Honestly, choosing music that you enjoy is ultimately the reason why everyone has different tastes in music. Music helps ground us, and with our background and environment, sad music can be a pathway that helps us internalize and understand our emotions. There are a lot of reasons why we may like the music that we do, but I personally believe our emotions are a huge reason why we choose to listen to the music that we do.

If you have time suggest some sad songs that you enjoy listening too!

Here are some of mine!

One X- Three Days Grace- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2YRVZ4cmeo

I don’t care- Apocalyptica- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3tmw2aAWHA

Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death- Jens Lekman (Thank you Dr. Robert Slevc) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMpZFRACq80&list=RDqMpZFRACq80&start_radio=1

Bullet- Hollywood Undead (Trigger warnings to suicide and harmful behavior) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP077RitNAc

I feel like I’m drowning- Two Feet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HLIMp2rkFc&list=RDMMa5uQMwRMHcs&index=6

References

Apocalyptica — I Don’t Care. (2009, November 24). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3tmw2aAWHA

Digital Daggers — Still Here. (2013, March 29). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2C6G3PCpqw

Frontiers | Sad music induces pleasant emotion | Psychology. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2019, from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00311/full

Gabrielsson, A. (2002). Emotion Perceived and Emotion Felt: Same or Different? Musicae Scientiae, 5, 123–147. https://doi.org/10.1177/10298649020050S105

Gavin Haley — Show Me. (2019, July 14). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPZQoyRZdNg

Huron, D. (2019). David Huron: Music Cognition at Ohio State. The Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Lab.

Huron, D. (2006). Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Hollywood Undead — Bullet (Lyric Video). (2011, August 10). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP077RitNAc

ILLENIUM, Jon Bellion — Good Things Fall Apart (Lyric Video). (2019, May 13). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9Zjgb03FMQ

Jens Lekman — Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death. (2011, March 28). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMpZFRACq80

Kygo, Chelsea Cutler — Not Ok (Lyric Video). (2019, May 23). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFdzgnMOmlw

Mikhail Glinka — Nocturne in F minor “La separation” (audio + sheet music). (2015, September 26). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g7_HR_2A0s

One X. (2014, December 8). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2YRVZ4cmeo

Saarikallio, S., & Erkkilä, J. (2007). The role of music in adolescents’ mood regulation. Psychology of Music, 35, 88–109. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735607068889

Sachs, M. E., Damasio, A., & Habibi (2015). The pleasures of sad music: a systematic review. Fronteirs in Human Neuroscience, 9(404), 1–12.

Two Feet — I Feel Like I’m Drowning (Official Lyric Video) — YouTube. (2017, November 10). Retrieved September 26, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HLIMp2rkFc&list=RDMMa5uQMwRMHcs&index=6

Van den Tol, A. J. M., Edwards, J., & Heflick, N. A. (2016). Sad music as a means for acceptance-based coping. Musicae Scientiae, 20(1), 68–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/1029864915627844