Dem Feels; What Dance Music Does To Your Emotions?

It looks like you're using an ad blocker. That's cool! We get it :)
You can support us by sharing this story or following us on Facebook.

Back to Top

Dem Feels; What Dance Music Does To Your Emotions?

Music streaming service Spotify have teamed up with Jacob Jolij, egghead Professor in Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience from the University of Groningen to figure out what emotions certain music triggers.

Thankfully the list features more than just cheesy pop bombs, wussy indie and sad rock with a few dance bangers thrown in for good measure with both David Guetta and Avicii making the cut as well as Coldplay’s beautiful single “Magic” that was produced by electronic whizz Jon Hopkins.

Professor Jolij explained; “Music can have powerful effects on our emotions: from making us happy, to enabling the ability to overcome fear, certain music can trigger emotions and hormones that directly affect our moods. The list of tracks compiled with Spotify highlight some of the most effective songs to take us from sad to happy or angry to optimistic.”

The results below are interesting but alternatively could have been achieved if you’d plonked an angsty, sensitive teenager down in front of some speakers and blasted out any of the below tracks a few times imo.

Personally we’d love to see an entirely dance music skewed version and seen what certain sub-genres’ affect is! Maybe it’s #sciencetime. Results below, check out the rest here.

Anger: David Guetta & Showtek ft. Vassy – “Bad”: Anger is a basic emotion. It is negative, and as such associated with songs in a minor key. However, as opposed to sadness, anger is what we call an approach-emotion: it involves movement, a dimension anger shares with happiness.

Combine these two and you’ve got a recipe for songs that may help in channelling our angry feelings: up-tempo songs with a strong rhythm, in a minor key, such as David Guetta’s Bad.

Overcoming fear: Coldplay – “Magic”: Fear is a negative emotion, characterised by a stress response that prepares you for a ‘fight-or-flight’ reaction.

In the modern age, we often experience the same stress responses in situations where the ‘fight or flight’ response isn’t beneficial – such as an interview or presentation. In order to overcome fear, the very first thing you need to do is to minimise your stress response, followed by managing your internal thoughts. Music that can help you to overcome fear therefore needs to be slow, relaxing, but have major chords to evoke positive feelings, and lyrics that deal with your negative thoughts, such as Coldplay’s Magic.

Excitement: Avicii – “Wake Me Up”: The hormones present in the body when we are described as being ‘excited’ – such as adrenalin and endorphins – mean that excited people crave music that is positive, usually in a major key, yet more up-tempo and with a stronger beat than your typical ‘happy’ song.

And when you’re dancing with excitement to Avicii’s Wake Me Up, the lyrics in excited songs aren’t as important as they are to other moods such as anger or nostalgia.

Can we all stop and remind ourselves just how great “Midnight” is please?

source: Spotify blog

Comments

Related Posts