Neuroscience says listening to this song reduces anxiety by up to 65%

December 24, 2021 10:20 PM

Sound therapies have long been used to help us cope. The 10 songs found to be the most relaxing on earth: “We Can Fly,” by Rue du Soleil (Café Del Mar) “Canzonetta Sull’aria,” by Mozart “Someone Like You,” by Adele “Pure Shores,” by All Saints “Please Don’t Go,” by Barcelona “Strawberry Swing,” by Coldplay “Watermark,” by Enya “Mellomaniac (Chill Out Mix),” by DJ Shah “Electra,” by Airstream “Weightless,” by Marconi Union
posted by folklore724 (21 comments total)

I am literally going to make this playlist right now and put it on repeat after I stop listening to Christmas music. I’ll report back on how relaxing it was after I’ve listened to it over the next few days. Science!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:20 AM on December 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

Interesting but I can't help but be a little skeptical. I think this is a writeup of the research and it says there were only 20 participants in the study, and only 16 tracks were tested in total. Also it was a sponsored study done by a market research company.

Personally I think whether the music relaxes you depends at least partly on how much you like it. I don't think these particular tracks would work that well for me. But I agree that the right music can have a very beneficial mental and physiological effect. I think music can be like a mood-altering or even mind-altering drug.

I find this one very relaxing.
posted by mokey at 4:00 AM on December 25, 2021 [11 favorites]

“Watermark,” by Enya.

Oh ffs.
posted by whatevernot at 5:03 AM on December 25, 2021 [7 favorites]

Just seeing Adele and Coldplay listed probably increased my anxiety by 0.5%
posted by Foosnark at 5:25 AM on December 25, 2021 [18 favorites]

Ok,but having All Saints on it makes up for Enya et al.
posted by signal at 5:57 AM on December 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

Here’s my soothing playlist (Spotify). Much longer and very eclectic.
posted by Peach at 6:07 AM on December 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

Thanks for this post.

I got very interested in sound therapy a few years ago after reading The Mozart Effect. I even went to a massage therapist who also did "sound baths." I was lying on the floor for an hour while he played drums and chimes and bells and I felt completely immersed in sound - way too woo for a lot of MeFites, I'm sure, but for me, it was an incredible experience that I was planning to repeat regularly (sadly, his business did not survive COVID).

When I was in the hospital for five days with the flu just before COVID, one of the best things that happened was that the music therapist came by and sat in the hall outside my room (I was isolated) and played his guitar and sang. He suggested a book called The Power of Sound.

This is a great rabbit hole if anyone wants to go down it.
posted by FencingGal at 6:30 AM on December 25, 2021 [15 favorites]

Yeah, I'm not buying anything this Fast Company blog post on a focus group by a market research company is selling. This isn't science, it's a commercial.

You want to relax? Listen to music you find relaxing.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:02 AM on December 25, 2021 [10 favorites]

I've looked at used CDs in thrift stores in England, Finland, Australia, New Zealand and the US. The only artist I've seen without fail in every thrift store I've visited in all those places is Enya, with Watermark by far the most common.

No wonder everyone's so stressed these days. Don't give up your Enya, people!
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 7:55 AM on December 25, 2021 [7 favorites]

Yeah, nah.

Gotta be Fripp and Eno for me.
posted by flabdablet at 9:33 AM on December 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

a candlelit bath and Music for Airports (Mr Eno) is a divinely relaxing experience.
posted by supermedusa at 9:53 AM on December 25, 2021

I too did sound healing for anxiety and OMG. In this case she literally took a shallow drum and beat it over my solar plexus chakra and I could feel the vibrations radiate into my body it felt releasing and renewed when I left like I got to shake something deeply off. I also have a weighted tuning fork that radiates vibration (for muscle, bone, nerve stimulation) it is ok and feels best against my sternum to radiate into my chest. Apparently this is why cats purr - vibration and bone healing. So ya, +1 sound therapy.

As for these particular songs, I find songs like Adele releasing (and nostalgia / cry emotion) but not so much relaxing yknow? Or like that song from Frozen, it makes me feel like electricity in my body, not in an anxious way but certainly not relaxing.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:06 AM on December 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

Okay I’m back. Still listening to Christmas music but I did listen to the playlist too. Unfortunately, most of these songs did not work for me, I think because I didn’t like them or just don’t find them relaxing. But I do think music can be relaxing because I have my own playlist that works sometimes. My preferred relaxing playlist has things like Mehcinut by Jeremy Dutcher and An Ending (Ascent) by Brian Eno, and the Aria from The Goldberg Variations.

(No hate from me for Enya though. I feel a pleasant 1990s nostalgia when listening to her, though I prefer Caribbean Blue. The use of that song in the Derry Girls finale was perfect.)
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:07 AM on December 25, 2021 [4 favorites]

I've been told that Hiroshi Yoshimura's Green is the official pandemic relaxation soundtrack.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 3:02 PM on December 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

Maybe there is a distinction to be made between music that directly puts us into a more relaxed state, i.e. it directly relieves tension as it plays, and music relieves tension afterward. Since lots of music works through tension -> release loops on multiple levels, it maybe follows that after listening to a song you've been on a little tension/release roller coaster and by the end can leave you in a more relaxed state. Similar to when you want to relax a muscle, so you first tense it up, hold it tensed up, and then relax it.

Of course, there are other things like dopamine and anticipation to consider so it's not that simple.
posted by ropeladder at 3:03 PM on December 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

It makes me weary that this sort of research is phrased this way, and then published for large numbers of people to read. The notion that people's reactions to these tracks are completely universal, as opposed to cultural in some complicated and idiosyncratic ways, just doesn't hold up at all. Gah.

As one example among many, I think about the moment in Ted Lasso when Ted, with the best of intentions, gives Sam a little army man toy. Sam, being from Nigeria, gives it back, saying that he thinks very differently about the US army because of, well, imperialism. In this case, Mozart may be relaxing to some, and represent European imperialism or toxic nostalgia for the monarchy for others, which are not all that relaxing to mull over.

It's such an unforced error to speak about them being the most relaxing "on earth" as opposed to just saying the reasonable statement "here are some tracks that 20 people thought were really relaxing."
It is so frustrating that this kind of research is presented as science finding a universal truth, when upon closer scrutiny it is so methodologically impoverished.
posted by umbú at 7:49 PM on December 25, 2021 [11 favorites]

10-hour loop of Weightless
posted by Jacqueline at 8:14 PM on December 25, 2021

This is the epitome of pseudoscience.
posted by spitbull at 10:03 PM on December 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

By the way that "Mozart effect" fad (and the phony Princeton association) has also been throughly debunked by music scholars and music psychologists as well. There is really no basis for ever saying this or that kind of music or this or that musical device or idiom or sound has specific therapeutic or developmental value for specific purposes. Whenever you see such claims, scoff. They tend to be made -- at best -- in a context-free vacuum, justified by extremely thin "experimental" methodologies (as already explained by some above), and literally designed to appeal to reductive popular mythologies, because -- trust me -- there is almost always a marketing angle involved (see again "Mozart effect," which was basically a giant marketing scheme). What music psychology really shows is just that ANY music can have beneficial effects on mood or development, but those effects are almost impossible to specify and specific to cultural and individual differences in experience (the music I find soothing may be abrasive to you); any claims that particular genres or tonalities or instruments -- let alone actual songs or pieces of music -- have this or that benefit for health or mood or brain development -- are specious nonsense.

Music can also have decidedly harmful effects. But we rarely ever hear about the use of music for torture or crowd control or propaganda. It's all over the place.

The psychological and cognitive effects of "music" (itself not easy to even define) are culturally and socially mediated. They are not simply organic or physical. Ever.

Rant over. I've been at this a while and advised more than a few doctoral dissertations in this domain. I believe almost nothing that gets claimed for music's "healing" or "developmental" value in any non-scholarly media, and not much that gets published as scholarly or scientific work either.
posted by spitbull at 5:20 AM on December 26, 2021 [7 favorites]

One more quip before I quit: a brilliant colleague of mine, on surveying the vast and unbelievably vapid literature on music psychology, once said "we now know a great deal about how western classical music affects the minds of middle class white American college students who are rich enough to go to college, but poor enough to need the $10 and a sandwich they get for showing up at the psych department to participate in a badly designed 'study' some poor schlub has to do to get an MA or a PhD or tenure."

The problem comes when you generalize those findings to all humans. I've been a fierce critic of almost all of the "cognitive science/psychology of music" I've ever encountered for its (consciously) naive and atomistic and reductive view of the human mind, romanticization and culturally provincial view of "music.," and minimal recognition of the fact that we are cultural and social beings.
posted by spitbull at 5:34 AM on December 26, 2021 [7 favorites]

I can't do music when I'm anxious. Even the most "relaxing" music feels like an assault on my nervous system.

If I'm in an ok mood to start with, some kinds of meditation music will increase my feeling of relaxation though.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 8:01 AM on December 26, 2021 [2 favorites]