You’re in the car or the supermarket, and a song comes on that you haven’t heard in years. Within a few notes you’re somewhere else entirely: a school dance, a friend’s back verandah, the front seat of your first car. You might find yourself singing along to words you didn’t know you still remembered.
Some songs do more than bring back memories. They seem to wrap them in warmth, like a hug from someone you haven’t seen in a long time. Researchers in psychology and neuroscience have spent years trying to understand why music has this effect, and their findings help explain why the songs of our youth hold such a special place, and how we might make the most of them now.
Why the songs of our youth stay with us
Most people have a soft spot for the music of their teens and early twenties, and research suggests that is no accident. In a 2013 study published in Psychological Science, Cornell University psychologist Carol Lynne Krumhansl and her student Justin Zupnick played 62 young adults two top hits from every year between 1955 and 2009, and asked how memorable, emotional and nostalgic each song felt.
Songs from the participants’ own early twenties seemed to have the greatest lasting emotional impact. But the researchers found something else as well: a clear peak of affection for music popular in the early 1980s, when the participants’ parents were in their early twenties, and a smaller one for the 1960s. Music, it seems, gets handed down through families. The songs our parents played around the house can become part of our own story too.
The study involved university students, not people in their sixties and seventies, but it points to something many older listeners will recognise. The music we heard while we were becoming ourselves seems to stay closest to us.
Songs work like time machines
Part of what makes old songs so powerful is how quickly and vividly they bring memories back. In a study published in 2009, Petr Janata of the University of California, Davis, played university students 30 short excerpts of songs from the charts when they were aged 8 to 18, while scanning their brains. On average, the students recognised about 17 of the 30, and about 13 of those were linked to a personal memory.
The songs tied to the most meaningful memories triggered the strongest emotional responses. They also lit up a part of the brain just behind the forehead, the medial prefrontal cortex, which seemed to act as a hub linking music, memory and emotion. It was a small study of 13 students, but it offers a glimpse of why a song can carry you back faster than a photograph can.
Why it feels like a hug
The warm, bittersweet feeling that comes with an old favourite has a name: nostalgia. For a long time it was thought of as a kind of sadness or homesickness. More recent research suggests it can do us real good.
In a set of studies published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2011, Clay Routledge and colleagues looked at nostalgia and the sense that life is meaningful. In one study, participants recalled two favourite songs and listened to two popular ones, then rated how nostalgic each made them feel. The more nostalgic people felt, the more meaningful they judged their lives to be, and part of the reason was that the music made them feel more socially connected, including more loved.
That may be the “hug” in the songs we love. A song from the past often brings with it the people we shared it with: the friend who played it endlessly, the partner we danced to it with, the parent who sang along in the kitchen. Hearing it again can remind us that we were, and still are, part of something bigger than ourselves.
When other memories fade, music often stays
Some families who care for someone with dementia notice something remarkable. A person who struggles to recognise a grandchild may still sing every word of a song from their youth. Research is beginning to explain why.
In a 2015 study published in the journal Brain, Jörn-Henrik Jacobsen and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig first used brain scans to find the areas involved in remembering long-known music. They then looked at those areas in people with Alzheimer’s disease and found they showed less shrinkage and less loss of activity than other parts of the brain. The researchers were cautious: the regions still showed signs of the disease, and the study does not prove that musical memory is protected in everyone. But it fits with what many carers see.
Petr Janata made a similar point about his own research, noting that the brain hub linking music and memory is “one of the last areas of the brain to atrophy” in Alzheimer’s disease. He suggested personalised playlists of meaningful songs could help improve quality of life for people living with it.
Songs that feel like a hug for many Australians
Everyone’s list is different, but some songs seem to belong to a whole generation. When the Australasian Performing Right Association asked a panel of 100 music figures in 2001 to name the best Australian songs of the previous 75 years, The Easybeats’ “Friday on My Mind” came first, followed by Daddy Cool’s “Eagle Rock” and Midnight Oil’s “Beds Are Burning”.
“Friday on My Mind” was released in October 1966, part of a remarkable year for Australian music that also gave us the Bee Gees’ “Spicks and Specks” and The Seekers’ “Georgy Girl”. For many people now in their seventies, songs like these are the soundtrack of their teens. For others, the hug might come from a hymn, a show tune, a song their mother sang, or a track from the first record they ever bought.
How to make the most of your songs from the past
- Make your own playlist. Think back to the songs you loved between about 15 and 25, the ones played at parties, weddings and on long drives. Streaming services make it easy to gather them in one place, and a grandchild may be happy to help set it up.
- Listen with someone. Part of the warmth of nostalgia comes from feeling connected to others. Playing old favourites with a partner, sibling or old friend often brings back stories you haven’t told in years.
- Share the stories behind the songs. Telling children and grandchildren why a song matters to you, where you were and who you were with, passes on more than a tune. The Cornell research suggests that music shared in families can become part of the next generation’s story too.
- Use music for someone with dementia. Following Janata’s suggestion, a personalised playlist of songs from a person’s youth may offer moments of recognition and comfort. It is worth talking with carers or the person’s care team about how best to use it.
- Notice when nostalgia tips into sadness. Old songs can bring back loss as well as joy. If a particular song brings grief to the surface, that is normal. If low feelings linger, talking to someone you trust or your GP can help.
The music that made us
The songs we loved when we were young are woven into who we became. They hold the voices, places and people of a particular time, and they seem to bring them back with a warmth few other things can.
So the next time an old favourite comes on the radio, it might be worth turning it up, and letting yourself be carried back for a few minutes. On the evidence, it may do you more good than you think.
