Musical calendar: does our music taste change with the seasons?
Deep into the winter months, you stumble across a new album, and all seems well with the world when you listen. Your head starts nodding, your toes tapping, and your thumb begins hovering over the “save album” button, but you hesitate. Why? The music is good, something you can clearly engage with, so why the delay? You look out the window and see streaks of rain on it, droplets locked in a moot race with a backdrop of grey skies and early nights. It’s a stark contrast to what you’re listening to, so the album doesn’t get saved, and you tell yourself you’ll revisit it in summer. Again, why?
One of the things that makes music so timeless as an art form is how diverse it is. We are constantly stumbling across new genres, styles and sounds; subsequently, one can attach different thoughts and feelings to it. Different seasons of the year make us feel a certain way, too, so it’s not surprising that we attach different genres of music to those seasons.
Scientific studies have been done on different music genres to determine what we associate with distinct seasons. It turns out that when the weather is cold and dark, in the fall and winter months, listeners usually turn to sounds that are a bit slower and more melancholy. Jazz and folk are particular favourites, but anything slightly subdued does well.
When the weather warms up and the sun comes out, people tend to reach for music with more energy. That usually means faster BPMs and lighter-sounding tracks. Around this time of year, electronic, dance, hip-hop, rap, and rock become the go-to genres.
We change the music we listen to because we want the sounds we are subject to to be a better reflection of our mood. If the weather is rubbish and people are forced to stay indoors, their moods will drop, and listening to upbeat, happy music will only lower their feelings as they pine for better weather and longer days. However, if they put on something slow that complements their mood, it is more effective when feeling at peace with the current situation.
It is worth noting that it isn’t just the weather that impacts the kind of music we listen to. Instead, weather affects our mood, and it’s our overall mood that impacts our musical choices. The sun could be shining, and the birds could be chirping, but if we had just received bad news, then we wouldn’t be listening to an upbeat, exciting record. The versatility of music contributes massively to its beauty, and our brains are complex. Hence, the way that they connect with the versatility on display varies.
This idea was expanded upon by Professor Terry Pettijohn of Coastal Carolina University. He had found in a previous study that when we are faced with hardships, we turn to media that has more mature themes. “We developed the hypothesis that when times are more difficult and threatening, we prefer individuals and themes of media that are more meaningful and helpful for those times,” he said, “When times are better, we prefer things that are less meaningful and more about just kind of going with the flow and being happy and partying.” Pettijohn was keen on seeing whether that extended to the music we listen to, and in doing so, concluded similarly to the above.
Pettijohn and his team carried out separate studies to investigate how people react to music in different seasons. The results showed that people like slower music in winter months and more upbeat music in the summer.
At Miami Palmetto Senior High, Victoria Sintes, who runs a program called ‘School of Rock’, agreed with the hypothesis that our taste changes with the season. “We definitely change up our sound by season…” she said, “When it’s summer, for example, we change our sound to be a little more upbeat and fun to represent the season.”
This is the general rule, but not the be-all and end-all. Seasons impact our mood, and the music we listen to is a reflection of that mood. Sintes reaffirms this, saying, “Even though for most people, the summer is a happy, free experience, for some people, it might be the opposite… This may explain why you might like certain music at different times from others because of what’s happening individually in your life at that time.”
As long as you can experience the weather and feel your feelings, the music you listen to will change over time. Sound is a natural occurrence; we hear it everywhere we go, and as such, it is only natural that we associate what is going on internally with what we hear externally. Given that the time of year has such a strong ability to impact how we feel, the music we listen to throughout different seasons isn’t just a reflection of what we want to listen to but represents how we interpret the world around us.
