Why do we like sad music? There is something magnetic and engaging in songs like Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton or Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. It is a musical emotion that far from overwhelming us or causing us discomfort, awakens our deepest feelings getting the world to stop, that we navigate in the introspection of our own being …
We are not mistaken if we say that in the lists of the most successful songs there is always one of melancholic dyes. An example as distinctive as it is striking is that of the British singer Adele. His musical career is based on that quintessence, that of sadness, that of that permanent perfume where disappointment, ruptures, anguish and loneliness permeate lyrics like those contained in the well-known Hello.
Are we masochists? Why do we delight so much with REM Everybody Hurts and with all those titles that we get to listen in a loop even going through a bad time ourselves? Aristotle himself said in his day that music has the gift of “purging.” In that first idea, what we know today as «emotional catharsis», that mechanism by which we allow ourselves to release complex feelings, sensations and emotions, was already advancing.
No one is immune to the effect of music. The brain is fascinated, moreover, studies such as the one carried out at McGill University in Quebec and led by neuropsychologist Valorie Sampoor, explain that neuronal activity in areas such as nucleus accumbens (related to rewards) would show that Music is as important to humans as food or social relationships can be.
We like sad music because our brain needs it
Those in sad music say that one of the songs that had the greatest impact on history was Nothing compares 2 U, performed by Sinead O’Connor and written by Prince in 1985. Music, lyrics and a female face crying in the foreground They are introduced almost instantly into the depths of our emotional brain. It is almost impossible not to be magnetized by a whole host of sensations, feelings that carry with us memories of the past, sequences with which we feel identified.
The fact that we can “enjoy” feeling precisely sad emotions is almost contradictory. This premise or that doubt was what led a team of psychologists, musicians, philosophers and neurologists from the University of Tokyo to conduct a series of studies.
I recommend silence of heart music
This type of music is a vaccine for life’s difficulties. In fact, we go to them as we do with books that tell us dramatic stories, such as when we choose to watch those films of sad outcome but that always leave us with a teaching. The magic of these indirect emotions that generate this kind of dimensions are something genuine and incredibly useful.
This type of artistic experiences disqualifies us from real emotions, those more crude and painful that so often paralyze us in nothing pleasant states. We like sad music because it allows us to make contact with our emotional self in a safer way, and of course beautiful. We can move with those letters at times of our own past, cry, vent and come back without scratches.
We can even get carried away by the beauty of music and lyrics to empathize with the artist, enjoying a moment of intimacy where you can also walk through that alien universe full of deep sorrows. Anyway, we always leave comforted, ready to face our days with greater temperance …
