Music seems to incite strong emotions I don't have otherwise.

October 4, 2007 9:11 PM

Some of my emotions seem tied solely to music. What is going on?

My emotions seem to be directly tied to music--emotions that I do not experience under virtually any other circumstances (certainly not with comparable intensity.)

In other words, I do not cry. Whatsoever. And I very rarely feel sad (or mad, but that's irrelevant here). But listening to certain songs...happy, sad, it doesn't seem to matter...trigger a completely involuntary response where I am overwhelmed by a sort of ironic sad pulling sensation, the sort of feeling you might get if you were faced with something transcendentally beautiful and fulfilling, beyond imagination, but had to destroy it with your own hands (doing my best to put this in words). Tears spring to my eyes.

I guess this would be more understandable for me if it were only sad songs, but frequently it's whatever songs I happen to be playing. Usually there are chorus-like harmonics involved: Kyoko Fukada's "Prayer", Yoko Kanno's "Rain" (male version), Imogen Heap's "Hide And Seek." ( The first song that did this to me, quite a bit ago, was "Adiemus", by the artists of the same name.) But again, any number of upbeat songs do the same thing to me, and many of them do not share any similarities (so far as I know.)

And sometimes I even get extremely positive emotions (from different songs). Not your standard pumped-up feeling, but more of a burning overconfident brickwallbreaking intensity--it's what I imagine drugs might feel like.

So, Metafilter, what's going on? Why are these overwhelming emotions tied to sound, even when I hear them for the first time, even when the lyrics are in a completely different language I don't understand, even when the emotions are completely alien to me? This seems to go pretty well beyond just being audiophilic or having suppressed emotions.

posted by Phyltre to media & arts (23 comments total)

Music is good, enjoy it.
posted by ludwig_van at 9:18 PM on October 4, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

Uh, you love music?
posted by JimN2TAW at 9:21 PM on October 4, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

...what I imagine drugs might feel like.

Uh huh.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 9:24 PM on October 4, 2007

do you play or write music? mayhap you are scratching the surface of a desire or need to make music.

alternately, try some soft drugs (pot, shrooms) and then listen to the musics that move you. Might be great.
posted by vrakatar at 9:30 PM on October 4, 2007

I used to experience this as a teenager; less so now, but it still happens occasionally. I rarely cried except to certain songs and melodies - things that spring to mind are Iggy's "The Passenger", the Knitters' "Trail of Time", and the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 7th. Anyone who knows these knows that they are not particularly tearjerking lyrically ("Trail of Time" is sad but nothing really different from any other sad-ass country song; "Passenger" is way out of left field). Similarly, there are songs where if someone else is in the car when they're playing, I ask them to keep an eye on the speedometer because they get me so worked up that I tend to speed. One would think I'd learn not to put these on driving mixes, but it's just so much fun.

The suppressed emotions thing might actually be a key, because as I've grown more in touch with how I'm actually feeling, it's less like unlocking the floodgates to play some of these songs and more just like an interesting feelings augmentation.

So, I don't know exactly what's going on (I always sort of figured it meant there was a short circuit someplace in my brain), but I know the feeling. It used to be truly scary for me to listen to several crying songs in a row, since a few times I got overwhelmed and my mind went to weird, apocalyptic places. And I remember specifically several instances in my young life when I heard the chunk of the 7th that I mentioned before and completely lost it, not knowing who it was by or what it was.

Incidentally, watching fireworks does the exact same thing to me. It takes a lot of self-control to keep from crying while watching them.

Email's in my profile if you want to swap music - although I know "Rain" and don't remember finding it particularly stirring.
posted by crinklebat at 9:31 PM on October 4, 2007

I wonder if this is a variation of Synesthesia? In synesthesia, "stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway." (per Wikipedia) It may occur as often as 1 in 23 people. I'm wondering if in your case it is invoking an involuntary emotional rather than sensory response??
posted by metahawk at 9:38 PM on October 4, 2007

Yeah, that's what music is supposed to do. You might be a bit "sensitive" -- crying is a bit extreme, but not at all unheard of. Or, who knows, maybe you're bipolar.

There are plenty of jaunty "upbeat" songs that happen to also be depressing as all get-out -- most of the good ones, really. The lyrics, the chords progression, the inflection in the vocals, and even something as seemingly trivial as an EQ or compression setting can help to transform a piece of music from "ooh, this is fun" to "gosh I'm sad."

Not your standard pumped-up feeling, but more of a burning overconfident brickwallbreaking intensity

How is the former different from the latter? I honestly don't see the distinction.
posted by Reggie Digest at 9:39 PM on October 4, 2007

You appear to be human. As it happens, another symptom of this condition is a fascination with the self-evident.
posted by bicyclefish at 9:58 PM on October 4, 2007 [5 favorites has favorites]

The latest WNYC Radio Lab podcast has a segment about a Neuroscientist at Harvard who's hypothesizing that certain kinds of sounds trigger certain emotions due to the pattern of electrical impulses into which they are converted by your inner ear.
posted by dantekgeek at 10:33 PM on October 4, 2007

A couple of thoughts.

#1 this means you love music and should seek out more.

#2 this means you are human and are having a natural emotional response.

#3 you are like me, severely emotionally repressed, can only really experience deep emotion when listening to music. Yoko Kanno is fantastic for releasing deep emotions within me. I highly recommend "Call Me, Call Me" and "Inner Universe." Imogen Heap also does this for me. I can provide you with a long, long list of music that can send me to transcendent heights of emotion, emotions that I simply don't feel in day-to-day life. If this sounds familiar, as with #1, seek more music.
posted by lekvar at 11:03 PM on October 4, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

I should also mention that if you do suspect that you might fall into category #3, no, that is not what drugs feel like. They are, at best, a cheap imitation. Fun, but not at all the same.
posted by lekvar at 11:09 PM on October 4, 2007

I've experienced what you've described, but haven't in a while. My experience differs in a wee bit, in that I wouldn't describe it as a sadness incurred by forced destruction, as much as having felt in time and harmony with the music. When the music is in sync with my aesthetic I am moved to this tear-inducing, personal fever. I don't think it's really relevant the content of the song, or its mood, for it to move you. It's just its tone, or its chorus, or the way the singer breathes her words that come out so perfect to you that you detach from the state you were in prior and enter another.
posted by albernathy0 at 12:20 AM on October 5, 2007

What you've said here does suggest that you do suppress your emotions, and that you exercise a more-than-usual level of control when interacting with others. Could it be that listening to music is a way of interacting with "someone" in which you allow yourself more freedom than you would in other situations? Maybe with the headphones on, all alone, you're not afraid to let your instincts take over (something you quite clearly are not happy to do in ordinary conversation).
I don't think there's any pathology here - I think you're just someone who controls your emotions most of the time, but relaxes that control when you listen to music. Music provokes this sort of reaction in many, many people.
posted by bunglin jones at 12:58 AM on October 5, 2007

i don't think you're crazy or anything. you probably do feel some emotional repression in your daily life, and music happens to be the trigger that releases those emotions.

there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, although you may find your experience of life events, both big and small, seem blunted without a soundtrack.
posted by thinkingwoman at 4:23 AM on October 5, 2007

May I suggest the book "This Is Your Brain On Music" by Daniel Levitan. He's a musician turned sound engineer turned PhD in neuroscience. I always wondered about the impact of music on people and its powerful grip on us. This book went a long way toward answering my questions. It might answer yours. Check it out at yourbrainonmusic.com.
posted by lpsguy at 5:41 AM on October 5, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

A great philosophical literature awaits you. Highlights include Leonard Meyer, Suzanne Langer, Victor Zuckerkandl, a raft of modern cognitive psychologists and music theorists, ethnomusicologists like Steven Feld . . . There is no one answer to your question, even if it ultimately comes down to a biochemical explanation or a humanistic/aesthetic one for you.

Check it out. It's good for 30-50 years of thinking.
posted by spitbull at 6:05 AM on October 5, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

Ah, but here is the "one book" for me for the humanistic and cross-cultural perspective I'd favor: Kathleen Higgins (a major league philosophical ethicist): *The Music of Our Lives.*
posted by spitbull at 6:06 AM on October 5, 2007

I am surprised people are commenting that you are over-analyzing or pointing out the obvious. I experience this exact thing, and often when I'm wandering around with my headphones on listening to something like Mew, or the Arcade Fire, I'll get all verklempt and my eyes will water and sometimes I'll start to cry. This can be difficult to handle in public, because the overwhelming emotion is written on my face and I must look peculiar. I have always thought of it as one end of a bell curve of musical response, where the other end is "no reaction whatsoever" and the middle is the usual "listen to music to get pumped up at the gym" or "listen to sad songs during a breakup" emotional response.

I am a relatively emotional person and I have no problem expressing my feelings, so I don't think it taps into some sort of deep well of unexpressed pathos.
posted by alicetiara at 6:14 AM on October 5, 2007

It's not emotional repression in my case. I cry all the damn time, music or not. But I experience the same thing, and I really believe that sound affects our brain chemistry. This explains why trance music can put people in, uh, a trance-like state.

Stanford had a conference on emotional response to music. Here's an article on the conference that's easier for non-scientists to read.
posted by desjardins at 6:29 AM on October 5, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Happens to me all the time. Its normal and I think it happens because great music both stimulates the emotions and when you concentrate on it you drop some defenses to feeling strong emotions which you have developed.
posted by Ironmouth at 6:45 AM on October 5, 2007

Do you ever watch the special features stuff on DVDs? Do you see the actors walking around with iPods and headphones? They're using music to help them get to a particular emotional place.

Music is a powerful force and many people have powerful emotional reactions to it. I seem to remember, in fact, that Kierkegaard says that music is pre-verbal -- that it accesses the emotions directly without having to go through our rational brain.
posted by ourobouros at 6:48 AM on October 5, 2007

FWIW--UCLA has a great version of "Awaken" that is acapella that you should check out!
posted by 6:1 at 8:05 AM on October 5, 2007

Those parts of our brain that have evolved more recently- such as the frontal lobes- go on the outside while older parts are more towards the centre. The Amygdala - which is one of the main centres for controlling our emotions is actually one of the older more "primitive" areas. Music has been shown to stimulate activity in the amygdala in humans as well as a number of animals (from chickens upwards). So it can be argued that it is normal not just for humans - but also for a range of other animals - to react emotionally to musical sounds in a manner that can be hard to explain rationally.

From an evolutionary perspective it can be argued that this makes sense for animals that have to learn to associate certain sounds with certain behaviours: imagine the way that a cat might be soothed by another cat's pur or viscerally excited by the squeak of a mouse for example. By triggering these reactions from the Amygdala they can be shared by animals that do not have big, energy hogging, frontal lobes like humans do.

For more have a look at A Biological Perspective on Music Appreciation.
posted by rongorongo at 9:32 AM on October 5, 2007