By Peter Pavarini
I was driving on a mountain road the other day when Christopher Cross’s hit single “Ride Like the Wind” came on the satellite radio. If you don’t recognize the song about a criminal fleeing to Mexico, it charted at #2 in 1980 and soon became a standard on adult contemporary playlists. Hearing it again, a flood of memories came back to me.
I distinctly remembered listening to “Ride Like the Wind” on a cassette tape while traveling with my wife Colleen to a cottage in northern Michigan we had rented with another couple. If my memory serves me, that was the summer of 1986. We were young and in love and very excited about spending a week with two of our closest friends. The memory of that moment in time made me wonder why some songs instantly provide a means of recovering the past.
The Psychology of Music
Most people say they are capable of hearing music in their minds without any external stimuli. Psychologists call this “auditory imagery” – the basis for expressions like having a song stuck in your head or “an earworm”. Whenever we hear a piece of music that’s important to us, psychologists believe our brains release dopamine causing that music to become intertwined with our personal identity. That reflexive response makes certain pieces of music meaningful and easy to remember.
Music has such prominence in our culture because it’s fundamentally an emotional experience. By listening to and performing music, we activate the parts of our brains associated with memory, speech, emotion and reward. Music not only helps us retrieve stored memories, but it also facilitates the creation of new ones. That’s why music is used to help children – from a very early age – to remember their lessons, escape stressful situations (like going to sleep) or just have fun.
What Makes a Hit Song?
Many successful songwriters have shared the secrets of writing a hit song, especially one that’s easy to remember. As an amateur songwriter, I have a rather large collection of “how-to” manuals which explain both the craft and art of song composition. Apart from giving one’s song a catchy title, almost every tunesmith says a hit song needs a “memorable hook” – something that attracts the listener and makes them want to hear that musical phrase again and again. But exactly what is it that makes a particular combination of lyrics and musical notes so memorable? The answer lies in the artistry of music.
To be sure, it’s not words alone. Many if not most poems are incapable of becoming lyrics, even with substantial revision. More importantly, speaking a lyric rarely has the same power as singing a lyric. The words of a song take on additional meaning and seem to spring to life when they are set to the right combination of notes, tempo and instrumentation. To be memorable, the melody of a song must be able to carry those particular words and deliver the full impact of the songwriter’s creativity.
Keeping It Brief
Although there are exceptions (such as a ballad like Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”), the most compelling, most memorable songs have relatively few words. The songwriters of New York’s Tin Pan Alley prided themselves on writing songs that were exactly 32 bars long and had lyrics consisting of approximately 50 words. Consider Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” – the record of the year in 1962:
Moon river wider than a mile
I’m crossing you in style someday
Old dream maker, you heartbreaker
Wherever you’re going I’m going you’re way
Two drifters off to the see the world
There’s such a lot of world to see
We’re after the same rainbow’s end
Waiting round the bend
My huckleberry friend
Moon river and me[i]
The Origins of Music
There’s growing evidence that the earliest music was developed concurrently with the human ability to communicate through speech. Even more amazingly, the oldest known musical instrument was probably not made by a homo sapien, but rather by a Neanderthal some 60,000 years ago. The Divje Babe flute[ii] discovered in a Slovenian cave reportedly was made from a bear femur and had at least four sound holes. Of course, there’s no way to know whether this Paleolithic flute was ever used to accompany a singer, but imagine how a primitive instrument like this might have reverberated with human voices in that cave.
Music and Spirituality
Music has long been linked with spirituality, regardless of culture or religion. The transcendent qualities of music are said to connect both the performer and the listener with something greater than themselves. People often express “being lost in the music”, that is, feeling lifted up from their ordinary existence to some higher, spiritual plane. Whatever humans believe about their place in the world and their relationship with the Divine, music almost always seems to be involved.
In 1835, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote “music is the universal language of mankind.” Modern studies appear to confirm his insight.[iii] For some reason, there are songs that “sound right” in different social contexts anywhere in the world. A major collaboration of musicians, data scientists, psychologists, linguists and political scientists demonstrated that certain song forms like lullabies and dance songs are ubiquitous and highly stereotyped regardless of their cultural context. It’s as though the human mind was designed to make music.
Perhaps the best explanation for why music unlocks some of our deepest, most precious memories is found in a quote from Kahlil Gibran:
“Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace and abolishing strife.”[iv]
Whatever explains music’s power, it’s almost impossible to conceive of a world without it. When medicine fails to heal, when words fail to express true meaning, when nothing else brings people together, there still is music.
[i] Sony/ATV Music ©1961 (renewed 1989 by Famous Music Corporation)
[ii] See Narodni Muzej Slovenije at https://nmsi.si
[iii] Jed Gottlieb, “Music Everywhere”, Harvard Gazette, November 21, 2019.
[iv] The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran, Castle Books (2013).
Be First to Comment