Music As Therapy: Can It Really Make Us Feel Better? 

There’s a scene in High Fidelity, the film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel, I can happily recite verbatim: Rob, a thirtysomething record store owner, is reorganising his personal vinyl collection. Not alphabetically. Nor chronologically. Rather, autobiographically: “If I want to find the song Landslide by Fleetwood Mac, I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the fall of 1983 pile, but didn’t give it to them for personal reasons,” he says. “That sounds...” his friend begins, bewildered and impressed at this new filing system. “Comforting,” Rob interjects.

The sentiment peppers leading music scientist’s Daniel Levitin’s insightful new book, Music as Medicine. Exploring how we can harness music to heal us; how the rhythmic pulse of a song can connect us to a place, a person, the past; how music is essentially, well, essential. 

Music’s therapeutic makeup is not an entirely contemporary concept, Levitin says – dating back to the Upper Palaeolithic period (from around 40,000-10,000 years ago) and with roots in ancient Greek philosophy – though he contributes a wealth of complex scientific learnings and case studies to the conversation. Notably, how encouraging Joni Mitchell to listen to her favourite music played a role in her recovery after a stroke, watching the “pure joy” in her face as she became transfixed by the songs; songs which served as an aural autobiography of sorts. “Music can invoke the daydreaming mode of imagination,” according to Levitan, engaging with the brain’s ‘default mode network’ – a trance-like state. “It can activate private, happy memories that lift our mood, or old traumatic memories – offering us a chance to recontextualise them.”

It made me think about one of my favourite podcast episodes: This American Life’s ‘The Breakup’. The show’s producer, Starlee Kine, is in the midst of a raw and blindsiding breakup. To help her process the pain, she calls on Phil Collins – creator of the GOAT heartbreak anthem, Against All Odds – to help her write her own song. Without spoiling the ending, it is the sweetest reminder of music’s mercurial powers.

Sadly, I’ve never attempted to pen my own torch song but would often turn to Joan Armatrading’s Weakness In Me or Ann Peebles’ I Can’t Stand The Rain in the early stages of one romantic disentanglement – unapologetically tender, heart-on-your-sleeve songs that mirrored my feeling of wanting a person out of reach. Which, in turn, made me feel less stupid. Less crazy. Then came Cher’s Believe (for hope). And, finally, some months later, Carole King’s It’s Too Late (for compassionate closure): there’ll be good times again for me and you / but we just can’t stay together, don’t you feel it, too? / still, I’m glad for what we had and how I once loved you. 

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5 Romantic Reads That Will Change How You Think About Love

By Emma Firth

These days, my playlist is a pick ’n’ mix of songs which comfortingly tether me to past selves. Teenage and trying to psyche myself to write, or to lift me out of a stifling inertia by sticking on Eminem’s Lose Yourself, and not even a little bit ironically. Free from responsibility, single and living off marmite toast in my early twenties, watching Girls in bed with my best friend, Meg Mac’s Roll Up Your Sleeves soundtracking the closing credits. Poet Ella Frears hosts Soho Radio’s Tears for Frears and asks guests to choose music that moves them to tears. “To temper the sadness, I play music that brings me joy,” she says. “Often these are linked to nostalgia, [such as] Psycho Killer by Talking Heads, for the friend that would put it on at every house party.”

And there lies the real magic. Music’s ability to heal a broken heart, to hush a chaotic mind, to bring us back to ourselves or create a joyful moment, is purposely mystical. The most intimate of art forms shaped by you, the listener. Your relationships. Tastes. Moods. Memories.

The other day, I cried listening to actor Richard E Grant’s Desert Island Discs, which was recorded shortly after losing his wife of 35 years. He’s asked whether music has been an emotional support in his grief. “It has,” he replies, “and sorry I have been unable to hold it together listening to [Eva Cassidy’s Fields of Gold]. Especially that song.” He pauses, throat tightening. “I have no religious conviction whatsoever but the fantasy of finding that person you’ve loved, again, is what you long for. Music is the emotional wallop, or the key, to understanding everything... in a way that goes beyond language.”

Emma Firth is a London-based essayist and writer exploring love, intimacy and joy for British Vogue, The Cut, ELLE UK, ES magazine, Rolling Stone, mixed feelings newsletter and more. Alongside this, she is also the host and curator of the new literary salon, Rejection is Romantic