Neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, author of This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, recently claimed that listening to music over speakers is a key to a more frequent sex life. Levitin analysed and approved data of a music study , which claims that music played over speakers makes us want to have more sex and spend more time together.
The study is based on 30,000 people surveyed across eight countries, and a field study carried out in 31 private homes. The field study lasted for two weeks. Heart rate, steps, acceleration, and whatnot were tracked with Apple watches and movement within the homes with iBeacons, conveniently connected to people’s iPhones. In the first week, no music was allowed to be played out loud, over speakers – participants were allowed to listen to music on their headphones. In the second week, participants could listen to music whichever way they wanted.
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Looking at the study’s findings, people hung out on their own in separate rooms during the first week of the experiment, while spending more time together during the second week of the experiment.
In his book from 2006, Levitin writes that, “before television, many families would sit around and play music together for entertainment.” What Levitin didn’t know before this study surfaced is that people who listen to music out loud are likely to have 67 percent more sex than people who don’t own a sound system.
The study also uncovered some odd bits. Like the kind of music people listened to when they snuggled up with each other: The three most played songs were LeAnn Rimes’s “I Need You”, Soft Cell’s “Sex Dwarf” and Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable.” The study doesn’t say why, for the love of god, that’s the case.
I once added a bunch of strangers as friends on Facebook to get free overnight stays in hotels. 2,000 Facebook friends gave me seven nights of clean sheets, cable TV, and seven free hotel breakfasts. One of these 2,000 Facebook strangers worked with Levitin’s music study, and turned to Facebook looking for participants for the field study. Since I love free stuff (all participants got to keep the electronic devices used to track them) and because I’m currently on maternity leave, i.e. pretty bored, I applied for my family to become lab rats in the comfort of our own home. My household consisting of my boyfriend, my four-month-old baby, and myself were chosen to take part in the 14-day field study.
From the start of the experiment it seemed pretty obvious to me that the second week (the music week) would have a positive impact on my family. What I found more interesting was to see how the silent week would affect us.
I love music and during this first week, we wouldn’t have access to anything to get us in the mood together. To make the week a bit more interesting, I decided I wasn’t allowed to listen to music at all: no headphones, no jingles on the radio and/or TV. Simply, a life without a soundtrack. Just noise. Because why make things easy?
DAY 1
It’s only when you’re not allowed to do something that you really want to do it. I started drumming my hands and feet a lot the first day, but according to Levitin, “most music is foot-tapping music” so that needed to stop. According to his book, music activates the primitive reptilian brain (the part of the brain that controls the stuff we need to be alive, such as breathing and craving fat and salts when we’re hungover). So this week would be about trying to stop activating my most primitive impulses.
The first day was a Friday, and a couple of friends wanted to come over later in the evening. I was thrilled. “We can’t listen to music on any speakers though,” I said. I tried to convince them that they could listen to music though their headphones during dinner, and that this Silent Dinner was all the rage. “Right, see you in a week?” they said. The study had already made one good point: humans need music to be able to enjoy a dinner in the company of friends. Fortunately for me, I’m a parent. I don’t need friends.
I spent the first day with the baby. The thing with babies is that they’re only really content if you either carry them or sing to them. While working on my computer I had to go with the latter. I decided that my voice wouldn’t count as music as long as I did my best to make it sound like noise. I attempted to rap Christmas carols, which wasn’t a success and briefly had me worried about what my baby would think of me. We went to bed early and the remaining 150-something hours without music started to feel like a real struggle.
DAY 2
The first thing you’d want to do on a Saturday morning is listen to loud music, light some candles and never get dressed. This Saturday we listened to public radio, so we dressed accordingly: glasses, shirts, blazers. The only thing missing was a morning paper. I wanted to buy one but it was – I’m not kidding – minus 18 degrees Celsius outside. Not an option to leave the house with a baby.
You know this song by Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds called Baby Baby Fallin’ In Love? It mysteriously pops up in my head whenever I’m bored. It’s been like that for as long as I can remember. Usually, I listen to another song and it goes away. But since I couldn’t, I tried to explain it to my boyfriend. Have you ever tried to explain how music sounds without making it sound like music? It’s impossible. All you can do is say the lyrics and make some noise. My boyfriend didn’t take the experiment as seriously as I did. When I said he couldn’t listen to the song in his headphones he left the house.
DAY 3
I was getting more used to a life without music, but I did worry about whether or not the experiment was frustrating for the baby. We have pretty much force fed the baby music during her first four months. Now I imagined she was showing withdrawal symptoms. I made noise more or less all day, which made me think that my behaviour was starting to get compulsive. It also made me wonder: What is noise?
Levitin writes that music is, among other things, rhythm, tempo and groove. Noise must be the opposite. It’s really difficult to slam things together without tempo and rhythm. Does that mean that everything is music? He also writes that, “we found strong activations in the [reptilian brain] when we asked people to listen to music, but not when we asked them to listen to noise.” Considering that noise is a music genre too, what I consider to be noise, someone else might consider as music, right? I was hoping that the noise I made sounded like music to the baby’s ears. It surely did not to my boyfriend’s – he worked particularly long shifts all week.
I was sure that if someone who doesn’t know me had heard me on this day I’d have social services knocking on my door. I sounded a bit like the shouting guy in “Freaxxx” by brokeNCYDE.
DAY 4
What if not listening to music would mess up my child’s primitive instincts? Maybe she’ll loose the urge to dance and forever find herself motionless on dance floors wondering why she can’t feel the groove? She could end up living a life without music, working in a sad cubicle, crunching numbers in a grey, boring existence, unable to feel joy.
I’m pretty new at this motherhood business, which means I don’t know how to manage my mood. I already don’t know how to cope with extreme amounts of breastfeeding hormones. Music is the only thing that makes me a little bit more like an actual person and not entirely like a clueless mum in Super Nanny.
The other night, for instance, I casually sent my boyfriend ten capitalised texts expressing my feelings of his absence in my life. He’d been gone for 30 minutes, sitting in another room in our flat.
Due to the cold weather outside, we spent the evening binge watching Breaking Bad. Normally it doesn’t feature that much music, but of course: Season four, episodes three, four and five – the episodes we watched – feel like three 45-minute-long music videos. “If I had a Heart” by Fever Ray is featured in its entirety in one of the episodes. I formed a new relationship with the mute button on my TV controller, and thought a lot about what it would be like being deaf, and teaching the baby sign language.
DAY 5
I decided to devote this day to podcasts. Obviously every podcast I listened to aired snippets of Bowie songs. I first thought this was the universe trying to destroy me, but later realised it had been less than a week since David Bowie had passed away.
My boyfriend produces a podcast featuring music, which he thought it would be a great idea to edit today. He spent the entire evening with his headphones on. According to the recently published results of this study, people were more likely to be alone during week where they gave up music. The study claims that is because listening to music is a group activity, but I’d say it’s because they listened to music on their headphones.
When my boyfriend left the house for some groceries, I could hear something in the distance hat sounded like music. At first I thought it was my reptilian brain playing tricks on me (had it come to this?), but I soon realised the sound was coming from my boyfriend’s headphones.
DAY 6
I listened to the radio. But even public talk radio station P1 played short snippets of music. So I had had to be fast and switch it off as soon as I heard something that could be interpreted as a musical tone or rhythm. It was starting to stress me out.
At noon, when I heard the neighbours listen to music (I think), I brought the baby with me outside for the first time in seven days. Breathing crisp air was a game changer. I had been holed up at home for six days, and now I walked with the buggy for hours and felt fantastic. Another recent study has found that happy music makes us see colours brighter, but I say fresh air is the key to a sane mind. The sky had never been this blue. The snow had never been this white. And I had never so strongly resembled a homeless person. I spent the evening doing laundry. The noise of the washing machine was the prettiest thing I had heard all week.
DAY 7
I woke up feeling like I was six years old and it was the day before Christmas. This would soon be over. I fantasised about what song to listen to first when this day was over. What mood would I set for the next day? Probably something Teletubbies related but whatever. Music is music.
In an effort to make the day go by as fast as possible, we went on an excursion to my sister’s family. I made them switch off all music sources before entering their house. Having dinner together and playing board games, we managed to have a decent (and sociable) night without music.
I went to bed thinking about the idea that speech evolved from music. “[Music] invokes some of the same neural regions that language does, but far more than language, music taps into primitive brain structures involved with motivation, reward, and emotion,” Levitin writes. As I closed my eyes I thought about how I would devote the following week to my brain’s primitive structures.
I thought about the things that could have made the past week better: not having a baby, having friends who like to hang out with me no matter what, and living in a country where it’s never -18 degrees outside. Not listening to music in the isolation of my home had been shit. Music is everywhere, and I’m thankful for that. I love music even more than before now – I even appreciate everything the Teletubbies ever made.
If the other participating households experienced anything similar to what I did in the first week, it comes as no surprise that they celebrated the following experiment week with loads of fun and sex. As a parent you’re only allowed to go out to party on rare occasions, so when you do, you tend to go all out with things like cigarettes and booze. The following week, music became our cigarettes and booze. We listened to music non stop at all times and in all rooms to make up for the “silent” experiment week. We also hung out together a lot more because the three of us could listen to the same thing. And the baby finally chilled the fuck out, thanks to the blessing of lullabies.
So do I think, as Levitin points out, that music makes us want to have more sex? In the context of this experiment: yes. But that’s mostly because we got hungry for social and intimate situations after a week of silent solitude. And what better way to get social and intimate than getting it on?
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