The single most relaxing song ever, according to science
We all love the music of The Beatles, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin. It brings joy. But can it also help us relax?
About a year ago, I was sitting on a train that lay dormant on the tracks. There was no station in sight; we had stopped in the middle of our journey, in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. I can hear a faint buzz over the Tannoy, so I take off my headphones, which were playing The Beatles, in a bid to listen. I can’t quote directly, but we were all essentially told that the train wasn’t going anywhere for at least another hour.
Under my breath, I exclaimed, “For fuck sake!”
I had been at home all week and was looking to get back to my flat in London without a problem. The idea of an already long journey extended by an hour was enough to make my blood boil. A woman sat opposite me overheard my frustration and asked if she could help.
“Not unless you can get the train moving again,” I joked.
“Hahah no,” she replied, “But I can give you a sound bath.”
The stranger proceeded to reach into her bag and pull out what looked like a range of golden bowls and a drumstick. She started hitting the bowls with the drumstick and dragging it across the rim, creating beautiful sounds—slow, serene, high, and low-pitched. There was no particular melody there; instead, there was just a climbing atmosphere. It eased my annoyance immediately, and that moment is one I always refer to when discussing the soothing power of music.
Don’t just take my word for it, though. Scientists have put plenty of time into studying the power of music and how much it can affect their mood. If you look through your phone right now, there are likely playlists dedicated to all of the moods you could possibly have, and that’s not just a personal preference; there are specific sounds that trigger different feelings in the listener.
Granted, music is subjective, and therefore what people might find relaxing will differ somewhat, but there are some universal truths. If you want music that will reduce stress and make you more chilled out, you should look for songs that are around 60bpm. The theory is that your heartbeat will sync up with this bpm, and that will help you calm down.
A team of neuroscientists from Mindlab International, armed with this information, opted to look into what the most relaxing song in the world is. They came to the conclusion, upon considering a range of different songs, that the track ‘Weightless’, which was put together by the British Academy of Sound Therapy, is one of the greatest tracks out there if you want to be relaxed by the music that you listen to.
This will be positive news for the trio to hear, as they put the song together purely with the intention of helping the listener relax. They worked with different therapists in order to work out the precise combination of rhythm, tempo and harmony that will make people relax and can even induce sleep.
The song comes in at eight minutes, and the researchers over at Mindlab found that it helped reduce anxiety in people by 65%. With numbers like that, you cannot question the power that music has when it comes to altering your mood. Whether it’s a woman on a train or a carefully constructed piece of music, sound can effectively reduce stress in everyone who listens.
