The reason why music makes us dance, according to science
Our brains work in mysterious ways, and when it comes to music, whether it’s pop, rock, or any other genre, there are specific reasons why certain rhythms, melodies, and other stylistic features evoke different emotional reactions, from joy to sadness and everything in between.
According to countless scientific studies, the reasons are clear: take any uptempo, melodically catchy pop hit as an example, and you’ll notice how, most of the time, these features can boost your mood through a chemical release called dopamine. When we hear songs that sound happier, we naturally become inclined to feel that way, too.
According to many of the same studies, several songs are conducive to that familiar dopamine hit. The Beach Boys’ ‘Good Vibrations’, Madness’ ‘House Of Fun’, Abba’s ‘Waterloo’, Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’, and Bob Marley’s ‘Sun Is Shining’ are also up there when it comes to turning that frown upside down – and it has everything to do with familiar formulas and firm rooting in pop sensibilities.
By contrast, the saddest songs all adhere to the opposite subset of features, typically taking on a more melancholic tone with slower pacing and minor chords. Some of the saddest songs of all time, according to science, are ones you’d likely put on when you’re in the mood for a good wallow, including Nirvana’s depressing grunge classic ‘Something in the Way’, along with Pearl Jam’s unrequited love track ‘Black’, and Eric Clapton’s heartwrenching tribute to his son, ‘Tears In Heaven’.
Why does music make us dance?
So, we’ve covered why some songs make us feel happy and why some make us want to reach for the tissues, but what about songs that make us want to dance? Surely, there’s some science behind that, too? Some real, analytical evidence that points towards reasons why we want to move to the beat of ‘Heart of Glass’ that has nothing to do with our blood alcohol levels?
According to science, there is a reason why some music makes us dance, and it’s to do with the fact that a song with a good “groove” is like a direct switch to our brain’s motor system, making us want to get up and move to the rhythm. In fact, it responds in such a way that it actively makes us want to move ourselves to the beat, creating a deep, psychological impulse that’s hard to resist.
According to research led by Michael Thaut at the Centre for Biomedical Research in Music at Colorado University, tempo on its own “engaged mechanisms subserving somatosensory and premotor information”, which, plainly, means that the brain processes also the rhythms and encourages your body to respond physically.
This is probably why, when you play a song with a good beat – ‘Dancing Queen’, ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, ‘Blame it on the Boogie’, you name it – it’s almost impossible to resist the urge to start tapping your feet along to the beat. When our brains hear these grooves, it’s almost like a trigger that pushes your body into action, even if you weren’t previously in the mood to have a boogie.
It also probably likely explains why most people go dancing when they’ve had a few – with inhibitions lowered and the more instinctual psychological reactions in overdrive, those familiar grooves become even harder to deny, pushing your body to move to the tempting beats of whatever tickles your fancy into the early hours of the morning.
