Music And Emotions: How Music Affects Your Emotions And Mood

Music effects even babies who are still in their mother’s womb. The effect that music has on people at any stage of their life is real-life magic, so in this post, let’s explore what makes it so magical.

For most adults, the most magical aspect of music is the potency of emotion it allows them to feel while living an otherwise mostly mundane life. It’s a chance to feel more alive. Many people would even define “truly living” as experiencing their life to the fullest, which potent emotions inspired by music allows them to do.

But why do some songs give us emotions while others don’t? Let’s explore that in this post, but for what it’s worth, here is my list of some of the most emotional songs.

Is Beauty In The Eye Of The Beholder? Is Taste Subjective?

Yes and no. As people, we share and already contain in us the same things that can help us find and feel the beauty in a piece of art. But we do come to a song or a piece of art with a different emotional background and different art education.

For example, someone who has been listening to western rock music will not be able to hear the beauty of a Japanese opera. Our taste for the arts has to be developed. That is the same as our taste for anything else: taste for better food, taste for better wine, better living, better way to treat one another, and a taste for the arts.

But once we’ve developed a taste for a certain music genre, much of quality music is universally agreed upon with relatively few exceptions.

Once A Taste Has Been Developed, What Makes Music Emotional?

Music can make us emotional in four main ways:

1. The song lyrics can be poetic and evoke imagery in our minds that make us feel melancholy, empathetic, or compassionate.
2. The lead singer’s tone of voice can evoke the same feelings in us.
3. The melody of the song may appeal to us.
4. We might have previously felt extremely potent emotions while listening to similar music – often during early adolescence when we begin to understand music in a profoundly different way and experience it socially in a new way as well.

Emotional Music And Poetic Lyrics

Vivid and poetic lyrics is what draws me to music the most, and what inspired me to begin writing my own music. Let me explain why specifically poetic lyrics are so powerful.

Many people think that poetry is flowery language or unnecessary rhymes. That is obviously a very limited definition. The single most important aspect of poetry is that it coveys imagery with relatively few words. Here is an example of a great line of poetry from Shakespeare:

“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.”

It uses metaphors to create imagery that you can picture in your mind without having those things described. And the more vivid the imagery, the more interesting the poetry. Sometimes the imagery even evokes emotions and makes as empathetic, sad, nostalgic, or compassionate.

That’s why poetry in song lyrics is so important. But it’s not enough on its own. To be good, a song also needs a pretty melody and a good vocal performance. Instrumental performance is obviously also important, but the vocal performance is a large part of what makes or breaks a song.

Importance Of Vocal Performance For A Song To Be Emotional

We are primordially programmed to different tonalities and emotions expressed in human voices. When singers sing a song, they overdo the vocal tonalities from regular speech, and make them more vivid – evoking heightened emotional responses in the listeners.

The Subject Matter Of The Song Can Be Emotional If It’s Relatable

Even though “art isn’t a matter of what, but how” the what or the subject matter of the song does matter when it comes to evoking an emotional response in the listener. The reason the subject matter of the song is important is that many topics are relatable. Just about all people hope for or are in a relationship. That makes love songs or sad love songs so relatable. When people empathize with the singer or the story of the song, it helps them have a larger cathartic effect.

When we recognize a situation we’ve been in or an experience we’ve had, it’s easier for us to put ourselves in the shoes of the hero of the song, and feel empathy and compassion with them. It’s in these experience that we are able to feel emotions that are felt by others, even if they are fictitious characters in music, poem, or a story.

Sad Songs Inspire Unique And Fascinating Emotions

Sad or melancholy songs create emotions in us that are fascinating to experience from a safe distance of listening to a song instead of directly in our life. It’s a good kind of stress that’s stimulating and interesting that helps us feel more alive.

It’s a similar mechanism to why people watch scary movies. They would not want to be chased by monsters in real life, but it’s fun to feel fear a little bit when it’s safe. It makes us feel more alive, and it’s more engaging and stimulating. But music is much more than scary movies. Scary movies are just entertainment. But music is enrichment for your very soul, allowing us to experience a broad array of intense emotions.

In my other blog posts, I’ve written about and created pages with collections of emotionally potent sad songs. Here are some pages on topics like songs about loneliness, sad breakup songs, songs about war, and songs about heartbreak.

Here is a list of extra emotional songs that make you cry.