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Why I Love the Music I Love
Understanding love at first listen
Since I made only average grades in Biology and Psychology, I can’t begin to explain the phenomenon of “love at first sight.” I know that something happens in our neural pathways: our eyes grow large, our heart even larger, and our body, soul, being, yearn in ways that feel both intoxicating and toxic, depending on the who-what-when of it all.
Of course, such events last only so long, often confused with pure lust or pure fantasy.
But what happens when we fall in love at first sound?
Susan Rogers explains so much of why we love the music we love in her study This Is What It Sounds Like: A Legendary Producer Turned Neuroscientist on Finding Yourself Through Music (Norton 2022). She explains that for most of us, our love for certain musical forms, certain songs and artists, begins in our infancy. As we are exposed to any kind of music, those sounds get imprinted on our minds and in our psyche, which explains why I react positively to both “This Land Is Your Land” and the theme song from “The Mickey Mouse Club” TV show.
“The sweet spots on your listener profile were formed out of genetic predisposition, cultural influence, and all the random and purposeful listening episodes you experienced over a lifetime of exposure to music. Most of your…
