The Science of Sad Songs: Musical Elements That Trigger Tears

Music has a remarkable capacity to transport us to another physical space or time and bring forth feelings of our past. Songs have the capacity to bring us to tears as they have the ability to remind us of emotions we have pushed down for so long, partly due to the relationship between music and memory. Just as we can feel nostalgia from songs tied to particular memories, we can feel an all too familiar nostalgic feeling from songs that tend to hold a particular fragrance of their own.

For example, Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” is a nostalgic song that tends to play at all milestones like graduations and farewell parties. There is something sentimental about that song; they seem to carve out the decision of feeling happy and bittersweet at the same time, and whether the event is bittersweet or happy, we will shed real tears as the reflective feeling of the song provides the nostalgic sound of happy, sad tears. The sounds imitate our feelings and lead us back to the moment, making the music feel like a time machine.

Read More: The Neurobiology of Music and Emotions

The Study of Music and Tears

An explanation based on science as to why we cry when we listen to music is that there is chemistry going on in our brains. Listening to music activates the hippocampus and the amygdala. These are two areas in our brain involved in emotional and memory processing, since both are associated with emotional responses. Experiencing some songs could create goosebumps or cry. Music may also release dopamine, which is the brain’s “feel-good” chemical. When this happens, especially during a powerful musical performance, we could feel so moved that we cry.  

Music as an Emotional Mechanism

Music is a great source of emotion for people. Schäfer et al. (2013) consider emotion as one of the emotional essence that drive the mechanism of music. These mechanisms by which emotion is elicited by music are still not exactly established. However, many functions and mechanisms likely shape the listener’s response to music. These involve the listener themselves, the musical or extramusical features of the piece, and the context in which the music is experienced, often a broader social setting where the music takes place (e.g., Garrido, 2017; Juslin et al., 2010).

Rates of response can be combinations of positive, negative, or mixed emotions (e.g., Hunter et al., 2010; Juslin & Laukka, 2004). Strong positive emotional responses to music include crying or something like crying (e.g., Cotter et al., 2018, 2019; Eerola & Peltola, 2016; Gabrielsson & Wik, 2003; Pelowski, 2015; Sloboda, 1991; Trimble, 2012), chills or thrills (Bannister, 2018, 2019; Goldstein, 1980; Panksepp, 1995), and other states that are more complex such as feeling moved (Menninghaus et al., 2015). In contrast to crying induced by emotion, emotion from tears in music-induced crying is often transient, carrying episodes that can become highly intense and concretely describable even after years. Emotional tears in response to music can be conceptualised as a deep emotional reaction triggered by auditory stimulation.

Read More: How Music Nostalgia Boosts your Mental Health 

Aesthetic Tears: Helplessness in the Face of Beauty

There are several explanatory theories for the (feeling like) crying phenomenon in response to art (Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2003; Pelowski, 2015; Pelowski & Akiba, 2011). These models and general theories of crying all share the basis of helplessness being the driving experience. However, while in general crying theories the emphasis is on perceived helplessness within relationships between persons (e.g., Gračanin et al., 2018; Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2003; Vingerhoets, 2013), in the case of aesthetic crying, the helplessness stems from not being able to comprehend the “sublime” aesthetic experience.

So a person is frustrated by perceived helplessness and gives up making sense of the experience, which produces crying (Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2003). In this respect, an original aspect of helplessness could be understood as the feeling of being overwhelmed by the beauty of music and art. A relatively comparable set of models, though more complex and cognitive in nature, was proposed by Pelowski and Akiba (2011) and later by Pelowski (2015). These models primarily apply to sobbing that is triggered by visual art. Cotter et al. (2018) suggested several reasons that would explain why previous appraisal models might be less applicable.

Read More: Why Do We Listen to Sad Music?

Individual Differences and Cultural Factors

Keep in mind that not everyone cries at music (and not all pieces of music evoke the same reactions from listeners). Individual differences in tendencies toward empathy and openness to experience, culture, and previous experience will differently inform how each individual reacts to music. Individuals with high empathy may find that they cry or get chills more easily with emotionally intense songs.

Also, culture plays a role in unique musical responses. Someone in Indian classical music, who has learned to associate a given raga with sadness through prior associations, may have a massive emotional response to that exact piece of music. In comparison, a person from a different culture who has no previous associations as a listener may have a neutral reaction. Likewise, one person may feel tears well up when hearing a gospel choir because of an emotional association with God (or faith) from that music culture. That individual may just as easily feel moved by the choir, but show that emotional response differently.

Concusion

Music can make us cry, not just because it may be beautiful, but because it connects us at a level related to our memory, experiences and feelings. A song evokes a time in our lives and releases feelings that we have buried deep in our consciousness. Research indicates that music activates parts of the brain that impact emotion. This is interesting because whatever we are listening to musically is stimulating our brains. It is possibly releasing a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Dopamine is one of the ‘feel-good’ chemicals in the brain. So, we can feel good or begin to feel emotional.

This emotion could be in a good way. Then, we feel emotionally overwhelmed. Many people cry to music for many different reasons. Sometimes, they cry for the same reasons, too. These reasons can include joy, sadness, or feeling both emotions at the same time. What we are responding to is likely also dependent on individual differences, emotional empathetic response and cultural experience. Generally, music permits us to experience some emotional reaction we do not understand. Crying to music is not a weakness; it indicates we have experienced something meaningful to us at the level of being human.