Music and memory

Music has been used as a way to convey and affect emotions as well as transferring information almost since the beginning of human civilisation. It is especially prevalent today. The myriad genres of music are all designed to get the listener feeling a certain way.  Most films and TV shows contain music designed to convey to the viewer the emotions of the character, or to create a general mood in the scene, or even to provide information not supplied by the characters. 

Now this is all pretty mundane stuff, not exactly interesting material. But what about when a certain sound creates an emotion or evokes a memory completely unrelated the meaning of the music. I’m not talking about hearing The Wiggles and thinking about your childhood, listening to the Crazy Frog and wanting to hit something, or even the music you’ve played to get yourself pumped up. I’m thinking about links between sounds, memories and emotions that make sense only in your own head. Confused? Here are some family friendly examples to try to explain.

The earliest examples for me (The Wiggles don’t count remember) are from Australian artists Diesel and Hunters & Collectors. In the mid to late 1990’s Channel Seven monopolised football coverage in Australia, and as these were the days when matches on weekends started at the same time, scores from the other non-televised matches where shown at quarter breaks. Accompanying these scores was background music, usually in the form of  “Tip of My Tongue” or “Do You See What I See?” Of course, what I haven’t mentioned is that this matches the period of time where my team, the Collingwood Magpies, were going through an extended period of on-field haplessness. So those songs invariably heralded the sight of another loss for Collingwood, something that the majority of people would relish, but not a young Pies supporter. So even to this day, these songs evoke some uneasiness and some painful memories, not exactly what the songs were originally intended for.

Another example comes from what I’ll euphemistically dub “end of school celebrations.” These celebrations involved many things, including an absolute flogging of two songs, “Day ‘N’ Nite” by Kid Cudi and MIA’s “Paper Planes”. So much so that even now hearing, or even mentioning these songs brings back images of that week. It has even got to the point where it almost works in reverse. Practically any reminiscing about those heady days between fellow revellers present isn’t complete without mention being made to those two songs.

Radio program Get This is responsible for the last example.  Get This shows were typically not complete without a mention of either Nickelback or yacht-rockers Toto.  The regular light-hearted derision of these two bands would affect even the most avid fans of these bands, especially with Nickelback lead singer constantly referred to as the Paddle Pop Lion or simply “the Turt”. If there is ever an occasion where I come into contact with these bands (something I try to avoid), I can’t help but think of Get This, or a certain frozen confection mascot.

Of course an obvious situation where music would bring on an unrelated memory or emotion would be where you first met, got dumped by or, ahem, got a bit hot and steamy with a significant other. But as I mentioned earlier, this is a family friendly blog. It’s quite interesting how many you can think of, and feel free to post your own in the comments section, if you feel so inclined.  No smut please.