See, the research even shows that familiar music is what we want.
I posted about this is regard to Zapoleon’s Rule Of Three.
It seems laughable that there could be such thing as a “community of participation” around something like singing.
But this is totally true.
Think about a rowdy Friday night crowd all singing I’ve Got Friends In Low Places, By” Garth Brooks.
They feed off of each other – building and building – until the major punchline of verse three…
Just wait ’til I finish this glass!
Then sweet little lady, I’ll head back to the bar!!
And you can kiss my…!!!
And what is everyone doing just prior to this?
They are smiling and exchanging glances about what they know is coming.
We have the same crescendo and communication when I sing Natural, By: Imagine Dragons with my children.
That first verse teases everyone until you are forced to nearly yell the chorus…
You gotta be so cold!
Yeah, you’re a natural!!!
According to a 2011 research project based on a fMRI study of people listening to music, familiarity with a song reflexively causes emotional engagement; it doesn’t matter what you think of the song. In “Music and Emotions in the Brain: Familiarity Matters,” lead author Carlos Silva Pereira and his collaborators write that familiarity is a “crucial factor” in how emotionally engaged listeners are with a song. But why does hearing a song over and over again make us like it? In her 2014 book On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind, Elizabeth Margulis, who is the director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas, explores this topic. She explains, “When we know what’s coming next in a tune, we lean forward when listening, imagining the next bit before it actually comes. This kind of listening ahead builds a sense of participation with the music.” The songs in heavy rotation are “executing our volition after the fact.” The imagined participation encouraged by familiar music, she adds, is experienced by many people as highly pleasurable, since it mimics a kind of social communion. That’s a sobering thought. If Margulis is right, it means that the real controller of the song machine isn’t the labels, nor is it radio stations or the hit makers. At the end of the day, the true puppet master is the human brain.
-John Seabrook, The Song Machine (Amazon)