How does music affect your moods

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I listen to an eclectic mass of rhythms and sounds. Obviously music is a mood enhancer. When I am sad or contemplative I will listen to Leonard Cohen and Cat Stevens, when I'm in a good mood I listen to Peter Gabriel, Harry Belafonte, or somewhere in between those styles. When I'm walking and thinking about how I need to fight my demons I listen to Kid Rock, or Molotov or Calle 13. I can listen to Tom Waits with any of those moods but that is just because he fascinates me.

So does your mood affect your listening choices? Do tell.

 

Oh yeah, definitely it does. Surely it is scientifically provable in some way, that music does influence mood.

 

More Dele-Dele ... (It's science!)

Does Adele's music move you to tears? Scientists identify the bits in songs that make you cry

Strangely I don't find Someone Like You terribly moving.

Also I think it's a two-way street - mood may affect listening choices but listening choices may also affect mood.

 

They work both ways. When you're sad, it's good to listen to melancholic music to create an outlet. When you're done with it, you've created "space" in your mind to let other moods in, which is a good time to play something happier.

When I'm sad, I tend to listen to Jeff Buckley, Ane Brun, Agnes Obel and others. After that I tend to get into my "laid back modus" (mostly lounge and triphop, like Morcheeba, Tosca, Lamb and Thievery Corporation) or regular mood (70s R&B, soul, jazz). When happy/active: old skool hiphop (DeLa Soul, Tribe called Quest), funk, drum & bass and some older dance charts like Deee-Lite's "Groove is in the heart" or Fatboy's remix of "Brimful of Asha".

 

Music affects me big time. So much so that my wife gets pissed at me. But I say that's why God created music -- to move our souls and aggravate our spouses!

 

Drum-ROFL

 

Music makes me feel better, mostly. Some bands and singers just annoy me and make me rather annoyed, like Elton John.

 

Yes, yes it does. see also: the amount of Cure I listen to when having relationship trouble. *sigh*

 

This is the song I'm listening to today. It would be a good one to learn how to sing because its melodic.

 

Music not so much. Books are far worse. Odd, I know.

 

I'd say it's rather the other way around. What mood I'm in affects what music I listen to.

Although there is a general trend that listening to music I like makes me more relaxed and it can serve as an outlet if I'm feeling pissed off, like MoN (actually, MoN doesn't look right, I think it should be more like Mo' Nuhn ) suggests. Conversely, listening to music I really don't like can piss me off immensly too.

 

Oh yeah. If I hear a Beyonce song, I get very annoyed. Especially if it's that Single Ladies (put a ring on it) one.

 

Katie Malua's My Aphrodisiac is You always makes me feel . . . . amorous.

When I'm in a bad mood, there's nothing like a Family Guy song to cheer me up. Stewie's version of I've got a Little List (from the Mikado) is right up there, as well as the FCC Song and Peter's campfire song Sodomy, inspired by Brokeback Mountain.

Most rap songs and speed/thrash/death/acid/whatever weird adjective you want to put in front of it Metal music makes me pissed off, and I usually change the station or turn off the music. The same thing goes for bubble gum feces like Beyonce, Katie Perry, Lady Gaga, Celine Dion (AKA Canada's Shame), anything done by the cast of Glee, anything done by an American Idol douche, and lame 70s music (ie: I've got you babe)

Some rousing Classical music always invigorates me.

The Alan Parsons Project always mellows me out, as do Billy Joel, Supertramp, Van Halen, Def Leppard and the other bands of my youth. Even if they are fast, wild songs, they remind me of when times were a heckuva lot simpler, and make me melancholy yet happy at the same time.

 

Happy melancholia ... that's an interesting notion.

Environment affects my listening choices. At night I listen to 'night time' music (subtextually creepy or a little dissonant or even kind of crazy - because night is the communal pre-rational crazy time), on rainy days sad music, on sunny days generally reflective or nostalgic music. Very rarely conventionally 'happy' music, unless it's just coming at me through the radio.

 

OK - THAT SONG ^ is the one and only song that drives me insanely up the wall and makes me want to run screaming to the bathroom to empty the contents of my stomach. Really. I cannot listen to 70's radio stations because they like to throw that one in over and over. I cannot stress enough how much I DESPISE WITH A PASSION that song. Even thinking about it makes me quiver.... o.k. my knuckles are white, I can let go of the keyboard now...breath Dice breath .... end rant.