Why Do You Love Your Favorite Songs? | Scarlet Keys | TED

Songs are the soundtrack of our lives.

From birthday parties, lullabies,

our first love, our first heartbreak,

our wedding song,

our next wedding song,

(Laughter)

And ultimately the song that’s played at our funeral.

Songs enhance the moment or the season.

They help us dance.

They make us cry.

They make us run the extra mile.

And they can even make us hate sitting in traffic just a little bit less.

Songs help us remember our lives.

They are a time capsule and a time machine.

Imagine you're riding in your car next to your partner

in your perfectly happy marriage,

when all of a sudden that song comes on.

That song, you know,

that song from that one summer love.

And as your partner is sweetly giving you a traffic update,

you are gone, evaporated --

(Laughter)

evaporated from your heated seat back to that Greek island.

(Laughter)

With the sunset lips of Pericles Constantine Dinos --

(Laughter)

coming in for a kiss.

You have been transported by a song

that was encoded in your brain that summer.

It's not your fault.

Songs are powerful.

Have you ever thought about what's in a song?

What's in those 3.5 minutes of arranged sound that have such impact?

We all listen to and turn to songs.

I've had the privilege of being someone who writes songs,

and as a professor at the Berklee College of Music,

I help other artists write theirs.

And there's tools we use as songwriters that affect emotion.

One of the tools we use is tone.

That's something we all understand, tone.

Imagine you're sitting in a cold hospital room

waiting to meet your doctor,

wearing nothing but your underwear beneath your "dignity gown."

(Laughter)

And your doctor comes in.

Nobody wants to hear,

“Hello, my name is Dr. Watson, and I’m your brain surgeon.”

We want to hear,

“Hello, My name is Dr. Watson, and I am your brain surgeon.”

Because when his tone of voice goes up, so does your heart rate.

And when his tone of voice goes down, you feel calm and like,

"I'm in good hands."

So tone of voice matters.

The next time you go on a first date,

you can either say,

"I haven't been on a date in a while."

(Laughter)

Or you can say,

"I haven't been on a date in a while."

(Laughter)

It matters, it matters.

So think of melody as the song's tone of voice.

How we say what we say is oftentimes more important

then what we say.

As Western listeners,

we have a relationship to melody,

and we have an expectation to that relationship.

So I’m going to play something.

And when I stop playing,

I want you to tell me what you expect me to play next.

(Playing the scale on piano)

Audience: Do.

There it is, exactly.

(Laughter)

So some notes feel stable and some notes feel more unstable,

begging for resolution.

And that's very powerful information for a songwriter to know.

The words we place on those notes

make the listener feel certain things.

I'd like to take a moment to ruin an Adele song.

(Laughter)

I'm sure you've all heard her song "Someone Like You."

In the verse and in the pre-chorus she runs into her ex unexpectedly,

and she's clearly still in love.

And in the chorus she says,

“Nevermind, I’ll find someone like you.”

OK, you know the song.

What if she had sung it like this?

(Singing) Nevermind, I’ll find someone like you.

What happened?

I apologize, by the way.

(Laughter)

In my version, we believe her.

We believe she will find someone like you.

No problem, there's plenty of you out there.

Because I have paired stable notes in the key and stable chords,

bringing a feeling of stability.

But that's not the melody she sang.

Those weren't the tones that she sang.

This is her version.

(Singing) “Nevermind, I’ll find someone like you.”

(Laughter)

Do you feel the difference?

(Laughter)

So when she sang “Nevermind,”

she sang it on the most stable note in the major key.

When she sang “find someone,”

she sang it on that note that you all wanted me to resolve

back to the home note.

(Singing) "Find someone."

And then she sings “you” on the bittersweet sixth degree

of the major scale, breaking your heart.

(Singing) "You."

(Laughter)

In her version,

we know she will never find

(Crying voice) anyone like you.

(Laughter)

We know that because she has paired unstable pitches

to match the way she's feeling,

building empathy with the audience.

Go, Adele.

(Laughter)

Another way that songwriters emotionalize our lyrics

is the use of chords.

Chords are just three to four notes

played at the same time.

(Plays piano) Three, four.

And chords have a lot to say about how our lyrics feel.

So let's say I want to write a song about eating a Snickers bar.

And let's say that I feel amazing about eating that Snickers bar,

because they just came out with a fat-free vegan version.

(Laughter)

I would want to make sure that I picked chords

that felt as happy about this news as I do.

(Singing) Today I ate a Snickers bar.

But what if ...

What if that wasn't the case?

What if I was despondent or very upset

about the fact that I'm eating the Snickers bar

because it was my ex's favorite Snickers bar?

It was his favorite candy bar,

and it was the last thing we ate together.

(Laughter)

(Singing) Today I ate a Snickers bar.

(Laughter)

So chords.

Chords help us define the mood of the song.

Another tool that we use is repetition.

Because repetition helps our listener remember our song and sing with us.

So again, I'm going to play something and I want you to be honest.

I want you to raise your hand when you start to get bored.

(Laughter)

(Singing) You are the world's greatest audience.

You are the world's greatest audience.

You are the world's greatest audience.

(Laughter)

I'm hurt.

(Laughter)

Exactly how did we all know that, right?

Because in songwriting, there's the rule of three.

You can't repeat the same melody exactly the same way three times in a row.

Something's got to change that third time.

Maybe I could have changed a chord.

(Singing) You are the world's greatest audience.

Or maybe the melody.

(Singing) You are the world's greatest audience.

So our brains love patterns,

but our brains also love surprise.

So I set up a pattern,

and then I surprised you and you were reengaged.

But too much repetition causes the brain to habituate

and zone out.

Too much repetition is a sonic cliche, and our listener stops listening.

How many times have you said to your partner,

in the same melodic stratosphere,

"Honey, pick up your towels!"

(Laughter)

"Honey, pick up your towels!"

Like, after thousands of repetitions,

their brain has habituated to your wife-voice --

(Laughter)

and they don't hear you.

They really don't.

They really don't.

So try changing your melody in some way.

(Laughter)

Next time, go,

"Honey, pick up your towels."

(Laughter)

Songs help us process emotion

and understand how we feel.

When we listen to songs we love,

our brain releases the feel-good hormone, dopamine.

When we listen to songs we don't like or hate or bad hold music,

our body releases the stress hormone, cortisol.

So try a little bit of this brain science for yourself at home.

Pick a song in the morning to start your day with.

Instead of the usual negative-thought train that blazes through your brain,

taking you with it,

put on a song you love that has uplifting lyrics

that primes your nervous system for a great day.

Or the next time you have questionable in-laws coming over --

(Laughter)

instead of awkward silences and small talk,

put on a song you know they love, and let the dopamine flow.

I like to start a song with a great title

or a concept or a clear emotion.

And then to use the language

that's a mixture of concrete language, metaphor and emotion.

And then I use all of the musical elements in support of that idea.

As music helps us process negative emotions,

as I've gotten older,

I've had to adopt new nouns to my vocabulary.

Words I never thought would belong to me,

like jowls.

(Laughter)

And turkey neck.

(Laughter)

And most horrifyingly, crepe skin.

(Laughter)

So in order to process my rage,

(Laughter)

I wrote a song about it.

(Laughter)

(Cheers and applause)

Alright, so here's a little bit.

(Singing) Crepe skin

oh, I’ve got crepe skin

I’m just getting started haven’t figured out the journey yet

Better than I've ever been

but now I’ve got a turkey neck

I’m wearing scarves like Diane Keaton

Turtleneck sweaters in the summer when it’s heating

Crepe skin

(Laughter)

(Cheers and applause)

I know you don't relate, but --

(Laughter)

Yes, I was able to laugh at --

I was able to laugh at the aging process

and better accept it.

And the delivery of my first AARP magazine.

(Laughter)

Over a year ago --

many of you might know this --

over a year ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

And I turned to music for my therapy.

In fact, my song was Lizzo's "About Damn Time."

(Cheers)

Yes.

(Applause)

After a double mastectomy, chemotherapy and going bald,

Lizzo’s lyrics, “I’ve been so down and under pressure,

I may not be the girl I was or used to be,

bitch I might be better."

(Laughter)

(Cheers and applause)

And the chorus lyric,

"I've got a feeling I'm going to be alright,

OK, it’s about damn time,”

became my fight song of optimism

and a shot of dopamine.

As there were days that I couldn’t face the next round of chemo,

and I would get a text message from an old friend

or a card in the mail

or a knock on the door with a huge bouquet of flowers.

And I was filled with love from those simple kindnesses.

And that support and that love made me face the next treatment.

It really made me start to understand why I loved that old song,

"You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings,"

because I literally felt lifted by the love

and the friendship that was surrounding me.

Because I shared what I was going through,

which I felt was really important to do.

And their love held me when I couldn't hold myself.

One day, one of my favorite songwriters texted me, and he said, “How are you?”

And I said,

"It's going to take everything I've got to get through this."

And he texted back,

"Well, it's a good thing you've got everything."

But I'm a songwriter.

So that idea --

(Laughter)

which he will get no credit for --

(Laughter)

I held on to that idea

because I thought that’s where ideas come to --

[that’s] where ideas come to me from.

And one day my dear friend and artist Susan Cattaneo came to visit and I said,

"I'm ready to start processing some of this.

I'd like to write a song."

And I told her about that idea, and we sat down.

And of course, the first instinct could have been the minor key,

because --

(Playing piano)

That's where we sort of feel that sadness or darkness belongs.

But I was feeling a lot more complicated and complex than that.

I was feeling sadness, but I was feeling fear,

but it was all lined with sunlight and hope

because of all my amazing friends and the community around me.

And so we decided to write it in a major key

altering one note.

So it was a blend of darkness and light.

From the major key, we got the major.

And then altering one note,

we sort of got a little bit of the darkness.

In psychology, there’s a term: “name it to tame it.”

And when we listen to songs that give name to how we feel

or we write them,

we can transmute and metabolize difficult emotions.

And I felt better on the other side of this song.

And I'd like to dedicate it to anyone here that's facing the hardest thing.

(Playing piano)

(Singing) The room went out of focus

When I heard that diagnosis

Words I never thought I'd hear

I told my family then my friends

As we all tried to pretend

That nothing bad ever happens here

But then there were cards and calls and flowers at my door

I don't feel so alone anymore

It's gonna take everything I've got

It's gonna take everything I've got

Everything to get me through

It's gonna take everything I've got

Everything I've got

Everything to see me through

So it's a good thing

That I've got everything

My head was spinning with a thousand split decisions

With my fragile faith and a rose quartz in my hand

But then family, friends and neighbors

The kindness of strangers

When I think that I can't do this

They make me think I can

And it's gonna take everything I've got

Everything I've got

Everything to get me through

It's gonna take everything I've got

Everything I've got

Everything to see me through

So it's a good thing

That I've got everything

'Cause love

Love is a real thing

And love

Love is a real thing

And it's the only thing

And it's everything we've got

It's everything we've got

Everything to get us through

It's gonna take everything we've got

Everything we've got

Everything to get us through

So it's a good thing

That we've got everything

(Music stops)

(Applause)