Can music change your life?

“You’re only as good as your record collection”

–DJ Spooky via Austin Kleon

Whenever I spend the night at the house of a relative I’m surprised at how much the background media (along with lighting) affects the entire atmosphere of a home: the TV channel, the radio station, the music, the way some families are happy to shout through walls, the power of the neighbours’ speakers.

We live in a very quiet house, happily, in a very uneventful part of the world. (Mostly when I take the dog for a walk I don’t see another single person.) I have no time at all for morning breakfast shows, or for any sort of daytime TV. This is something I share with my husband and I believe it’s one of the main criteria for happy co-habitation. If you can’t stand newstalk radio it’s definitely something to bring up on a first date. Both myself and my husband have a long history of turning off radios which nobody appears to be listening to.

My aversion to daytime TV isn’t borne of some puritanical ethic whereby I think watching TV during the day is sinful, but rather the fact that cheap, cheesy programming full of infomercials, along with exploitative talk-show type crap is broadcast before three in the afternoon.

This is followed by the mostly noisy children’s shows, with low-budget theme songs and insanely high-pitched voices. Here in Australia we have Giggle and Hoot — who is popular, I’ll admit, and I can hear him coming from the kid’s iPad as I write — but I worry for that guy’s voice. One of these days the wind’s going to change.

Can music change your mindset for the worse?

The answer to that is ‘yes’, if you’re the man who was choked to death by his girlfriend because he wouldn’t stop singing Thrift Shop. I believe someone’s neighbour was shot after playing Celine Dion’s I Will Always Love You over and over again, but I can’t find any Internet reference to that and may well be making it up. Oh well. False memories are telling.

Why did that Nickelback fan love the love that song so much when his girlfriend couldn’t stand it? Who understands the nature of earworms? I’ve had Quadrille by Paolo Conte in my head for an entire week. Listen to it if you dare. (Darn. Now I’m done for, for another entire week of Greek dancing in the kitchen. Particularly troubling since that’s not a Greek song.)

People are studying this stuff. Apparently, background music can affect your perceptions of wine. Extend this thought and shopping malls might learn to manipulate us all into buying more merchandise. I can see why there are funds to study this possibility. Might it also be used to good effect in the classroom? (My own attempts at playing music in the classroom were largely unsuccessful due to ridiculously flimsy walls. On one occasion the principal wondered who was throwing a party.)

You won’t be surprised to know that our reactions to music involve hormones. The more I read about hormones, the more I conclude that none of us has a single personality between us: We’re all just driven by hormones. We may have no free will whatsoever. With that depressing possibility, bear in mind that if you’re someone who gets the shivers when listening to certain music, dopamine is your reason. (from Nine Facts That Will Change The Way You Think About Music) Classical music can give me the shivers, especially the soundtrack to Frida. I’ve avoided watching the film in case the film ruins the soundtrack. (That happened with The Mission.)

On the other hand, Masters Of War by Bob Dylan makes me yearn for a punching bag. That’s how effective it is at making me mad about war.

Certain other songs take me right back to a previous part of my life in the same way a smell can. Nothing takes me back to 1996 Japan quite like the Young Love album by the Southern All Stars, especially the song Ai No Kotodama, which is sung in Japanese, but in a weirdly false American English accent. So it follows that if you want to revisit (or dwell on) certain eras of your life, listen to music you played a lot during that time. There’s nothing like a relationship break-up to ruin an entire collection of songs, after all.

Trying to be happier works when listening to upbeat music. This is obviously more complicated than saying ‘This piece of music will make you happy’.

It seems clear to me that even if music can’t Change Your Life, it can definitely affect your mindset in the moment. And over a career of music-listening? Sure, I guess your music will affect your life.

See also: Why You May Want To Bring Your Own Music To The Casino from Big Think