Sounds comforting: Why nostalgic music brings succour to listeners

This is a personal account of how a band arrived like a knight in shining armour to rescue this writer from the doldrums when the pandemic first hit It was April 2020 The world had shut down like a Venus flytrap when an insect sits on it Things made as little sense as algebra does to an eightyearold kid but then The Strokes launched their sixth studio album The New Abnormal its prescient title summing up the times that we were living in And for a while the crippling uncertainty of that period faded away as we played that record on loop the music taking us back to a happier more familiar time because Irsquoll try anything once mdash another song by the same band mdash was the soundtrack for our weddingThe Strokes gave new life to indie rock when they launched Is This It their seminal debut album in 2001 PicGetty ImagesMusic has this curious effect of transporting people back to the past igniting memories that lie dormant in the inner recesses of the brain And itrsquos not just us familiar music has provided succour to millions around the world over the past two years according to data that Spotify released in mid2020 The streaming giant revealed that there was a 54per cent hike in the number of times listeners played nostalgiathemed playlists during the pandemic The reason says Mumbaibased musician and music educator Aditya Ashwath is that just like a certain perfume can bring back memories of a longlost lover music too can take us back to a more soothing past when the world seems topsyturvy Ashwath says ldquoYou derive a certain comfort from it because there is a sense of familiarityrdquoBlast from pastItrsquos an experience most of us are bound to have had but what exactly is nostalgic music Just like one manrsquos meat is another manrsquos poison one personrsquos idea of nostalgic music might be wholly different from someone elsersquos Ashwath explains ldquoThere was a study that showed that how for a lot of people who are not musicians themselves their taste gets crystallised in their teens and college days The music they heard then is what they carried throughout their lives But people who are on Spotify usually started listening properly only at the turn of the millennium and nostalgic songs for them would be those from the early 2000s maybe some alternative rock and RampB If you were to talk to someone in their 60s on the other hand theyrsquod probably tell you that itrsquos classic rock for themrdquoSamay Ajmera and Aditya AshwathDifferent musical strokes for different folks in other words But the point remains During the pandemic people collectively turned towards nostalgic music whatever notion they might have of it ldquoItrsquos an easy way to access a memory taking you away from the present and back to the pastrdquo Ashwath reiterates adding ldquoBut we have a skewed perception of the past mdash we tend to overlook the bad things that have happened We look at nostalgia with fondness Thatrsquos why itrsquos comfortingrdquo What hersquos saying here is something that citybased life coach and music therapist Samay Ajmera agrees with Ajmera also tells us about a concept called iso principle used in music therapy which negates the notion that if a person is sad they should necessarily listen to a happy song to lift spirits ldquoYou can listen to a sad song toordquo he tells us explaining that the idea is to match the music to your mood before shifting it in another directionClick for helpSometimes though itrsquos not even a particular song that evokes nostalgia Itrsquos a mere sound ldquoTake Pink Floyd for examplerdquo Ashwath says ldquoYou donrsquot necessarily need to listen to the band A similar sound will ignite the same channels and circuitry in your brain And with Spotify the algorithm is such that itrsquos really good at making playlists that put matching sounds together You donrsquot think a lot about what next to play So you can just put on a nostalgiathemed playlist and you can trust that the algorithm will come up with something that yoursquore looking forrdquoWhat that means is that with the third wave of the pandemic now upon us and the tumultuous days of 2020 seemingly back again help is just one mere click away And it works if we are to test the theory on ourselves because the entirety of The New Abnormal is by now entrenched in our brain In fact both Ashwath and Ajmera have a point when they agree that people tend to look at the past with tinted glasses mainly remembering the happier days Itrsquos been almost two years since the pandemic April 2020 seems a long time ago considering how time has dragged on in the meantime And if we were to now look back that period with any sense of nostalgia our fondest memory would be of playing that Strokes album