Music is part of everyone’s life, it’s everywhere. Today, one of my favorite songs, “American Girl” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, was playing on our Sonos system, which, in recent months, has gone through some asinine upgrades resulting in horrific performance resulting in both consumer outrage and a twenty-five percent decline in the company’s stock performance! That is a sad story and accompanying rant which I’m saving for another day. Meanwhile, back to Tom Petty whose October 20th birthday I recently noted on social media as one more year since his passing has come around. Most, if not all of Tom Petty’s music feels so right and hits me in a way that’s hard to describe, bringing mixed feelings of relaxation and stimulation, leaving me to wonder why we love the songs we do.
Some research has shown that we can listen to our favorite songs over and over, never getting bored with said repetition. Music tends to bring mixed emotions at times, hitting some emotional cord inside of us so we play a particular song more. Music has always been an important part of my life and, over the years, my taste in it has changed exponentially. The music I choose reflects who I am and the many different aspects of my life.
Clinically speaking, we listen to certain songs repeatedly because they activate the reward system in our brain, releasing dopamine and generating a kind of addictive process. Since certain songs make us feel good, we want to listen to them again and, when we know a song very well, an intense discharge of dopamine occurs in our brain when we anticipate certain parts of the song. This doesn’t happen when we listen to music we dislike and we then choose to gravitate to the well-loved songs that make our brains light up.
I find this all so interesting as I sit here with music running through my head and I think about some songs that are special, at least to me. Some, I will play over and over again when I’m driving. My finger repeatedly presses forward, then reverse, on the steering wheel control as I go along. For some reason, those chosen few songs stimulate a different brain process than any of the other tunes on my extensive playlist. That feeling we get from our best-loved music is very cool! Admit it.
Before I forget, a random list of what I feel are the top ten best songs of all time. Most of this list is music by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, starting with “The Waiting”, “You Got Lucky”, “Don’t Do Me Like That”, “Room at the Top” and, of course, “American Girl”. I’ll also throw out Linkin Park’s “Leave Out All the Rest”, Gary Moore’s, “Still Got the Blues”, Sia’s “My Snowman and Me”, System of a Down’s “Toxicity” and Muse’s “Supermassive Black Hole”.
Rest assured, the “repeat” button is activated when each one is played.
From the Writer’s Workshop…List the top ten best songs of all time, according to you.
