As a music lover, hearing a great new track from a new artist can really uplift my mood, turning my day from a good one to a great one. This can be from a number of things, the pacy beat, the resonating lyrical content to the irresistible melodies running through the track. Music licensing has got to be partly responsible for this... For as long as I can remember hearing music against adverts, tv shows and films is the norm and it has impacted on the way music has made us feel, so much so that every time I hear a song I can imagine a visual that goes with it. For example, if I hear anything remotely folky I instantly feel like I could be in a log cabin with friends around a camp fire. I must have heard something of this genre with this backdrop in a film or an advert or tv show.
Even now when I hear a new track I can already think about the type of visual that would go with it. Is this why we like music so much? Is it because of what we see when we hear it? There are many studies into the science of music that show that certain genres can cause blood flow to the brain when they listen to music associated with reward, emotion and arousal. Perhaps it is linked with these things because we have seen visuals of people experiencing success or reward. For instance, the 2015 film Focus with Margot Robbie and Will Smith includes a scene in which the anti-heroes are succeeding in their scam while "Sympathy For The Devil" by the Rolling Stones is playing in the background . The upbeat , rhythmic song, which for lack of a better word is just utterly timeless and "cool", resonates with the theory that listening to certain tracks does create the sense of reward.
Another example of this is "Field Of Gold" by Eva Cassidy (originally done by Sting) which is often associated with adverts for charities as it pulls on the heart strings and taps into the emotional part of the brain that makes us want to cry. Then there is arousal, tracks that have been used in steamy scenes in films and TV shows - when hearing them again that song can instantly make us think of our own sexual wants and desires. Powerful stuff ...