Dear reader, let me take you back to 2008.
Obama had just taken to office, Lady Gaga was asking us to ‘Just Dance’ and a 13-year-old Velvet Winter took this picture into the hairdresser and asked for the Gerard Way.
“You know this is a boy’s haircut, right,” the confused hairdresser said.
Gerard Way circa 2005 (Isn't he perfect?) Source: Twitter
“I know!” I replied, excited to be closer to Way through the medium of hairstyle.
I, like so many others, was swept up in the revolution that was second-wave emo.
This morning My Chemical Romance (MCR for short) announced that six long years after they called it quits, they are reuniting to play live.
In addition to a one-off show in LA, the band have been announced as the headliner for Download festival 2020 in Melbourne and Sydney.
Safe to say, fans around the world lost their collective minds.
If you are unfamiliar with MCR (blasphemy), they were a pillar band of the emo revival of the early and mid-2000’s.
MCR delights in releasing music that revolves around angst, sadness, depression, death and your father taking you into the city to see a marching band.
MCR have sold over 8.5 million albums worldwide; they are one of the top tier bands former and current emos turn to in their time of need.
Thirteen year old me would have said she loves MCR despite the dark themes, “JUST BECAUSE! YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ME, MUM!”
But we can’t all be thirteen forever - so I’m turning to science to see if it can shed some light.
Turning music-based sadness into music-based reward.
Music philosopher Jerrold Levinson had a crack at explaining just why we’re so attracted to sad tunes. He came up with eight reasons to suggest why we vibe with negative emotions.
Here we go:
- Apprehending expression: Connecting to the emotion in the work makes us feel like we understand the work better.
- Catharsis: Sad music provides a “controlled purification” from negative emotions that are plaguing us.
- Savouring feelings: feeling sad for sadness’ sake.
- Understanding feeling: AKA,“I really get what it means to be sad.”
- Emotional assurance: “If I can feel this very intense emotion then I must be ALIVE.”
- Emotional resolution: The sense of “mastery” one feels when a sad song ends happily.
- Expressive potency: “I relate to Gerard Way therefore I AM Gerard Way.”
- Emotional communion: Sharing sadness with others or 'why every emo had to signify they were an emo to others via a side fringe.'
Levinson also said that the imagination and lack of “real life” consequences of blasting a sad tune help us make the internal switch from music-evoked sadness to music-evoked reward.
Levinson’s theories were put to the test in 2014.
A German study, conducted by Liila Taruffi and Stefan Koelsch, examined 772 people’s emotional relationship to sad music.
Rather than Levinson’s eight music-evoked rewards, Taruffi and Koelsch distilled it down to four;
- No “real-life” implications: If you were to experience sadness in real life, say through losing a loved one or a bad break up, there would be a tangible consequence. Music-based sadness carries none of these physical negatives.
- Emotional regulation: Experiencing sadness through music makes you feel better after listening to it.
- Empathy: “I like to empathise with the sadness expressed in the music, as if it were another individual”
- Reward of Imagination: Sad music is pleasurable because it allows us to imagine ourselves in the same expressive situations.
Respondents then ranked certain statements in terms of how ‘relatable’ they were.
The most ‘relatable statement’ backed up Levinson’s theory around the rewards of ‘no “real life” implications’: that we like to feel sad when there are no physical consequences
(e.g. “I can enjoy the pure feeling of sadness in a balanced fashion, neither too violent, nor as intense as in real-life.”)
The second most ‘relatable statement’ was the reward of emotional regulation. Listening to sad music allows us to work through emotions safely (‘controlled’), thus improving our mood.
A 2011 US study backed up Taruffi and Koelsch by identifying that empathy was a major personality trait associated with liking sad music.
Suggesting that, “aesthetic appreciation and empathetic engagement play a role in the enjoyment of sad music.”
Which is weird cause “aesthetic appreciation and empathetic engagement” is pretty much the definition of emo culture.
Participants were then asked to report what emotion they most frequently felt when listening to sad music.
Only 44 per cent responded ‘sadness’ and there was one emotion that far out-ranked all others…
It’s nostalgia, babaaaaaay
A huge 76 per cent of people said that the top emotion they had when they listened to sad music was nostalgia.
As it turns out, nostalgia plays a massive part in why and how we relate to sad music and lyrics.
A 2007 study published in The American Journal of Psychology identified that historical nostalgia (“a distant past that is perceived as superior to the present”) is more commonly associated with sad music.
You know, like when a MCR song comes on shuffle and you’re immediately transported back to you and your friends screaming “I’M NOT OK” in year 9.
The study references the possible positive effect of musical nostalgia in promoting community and countering alienation - which in turn can lead to greater psychological health.
Speaking to The Huffington Post, Taruffi warned that her findings aren’t true for everyone and suggested people check in with why they’re, say, chucking on a MCR record, to make sure its safe for their mental health.
But if you’re screaming along to ‘Helena’ on repeat today in joyous nostalgia and a sense of shared community then scream on, killjoys.
Oh and how did my year 8 Gerard Way cut go?
...yeah, not so great.
The author regrets to confirm that this is a picture of her from 2008. Source: Supplied
