Why Do We Listen to Sad Songs?

MAUGHAN: Why are you doing this to yourself?

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DUCKWORTH: I’m Angela Duckworth.

MAUGHAN: I’m Mike Maughan.

DUCKWORTH + MAUGHAN: And you’re listening to No Stupid Questions.

Today on the show: why do people like sad songs?

DUCKWORTH: It’s just like sadness, and then more sadness, and then it’s: fade to black.

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DUCKWORTH: Mike, we recently talked about being funny, but now we have an email from an NSQ listener about being sad.  

MAUGHAN: I think I prefer talking about being funny than being sad, but that’s okay. Here we go.  

DUCKWORTH: So, it’s from Colin. And he writes, “Whenever I’m sad, I tend to listen to sad music. My girlfriend caught me crying while listening to ‘Sound of Silence’ by Simon & Garfunkel. She said the sad song probably made it worse. Any data on this?”

MAUGHAN: Well, let me just first say that, Colin, I completely connect with this, because when I’m having a bad day or going through something bad, I for sure listen to sad music. 

DUCKWORTH: Okay, wait, what’s sad for you? Give me a sad song.

MAUGHAN: The saddest song for me is James Blunt, “Goodbye My Lover.”

DUCKWORTH: James Blunt — do not know who this person is.

MAUGHAN: Oh my gosh, first of all, James Blunt, his, like, voice is so sad.  

DUCKWORTH: Okay, wait. Now I need to know the circumstances under which —

MAUGHAN: Well, obviously it was during a break-up, duh.

DUCKWORTH: Okay, I was going to say like, I don’t want to touch a sore subject, but like, wait, and how old were you?

MAUGHAN: Oh — twenty five? But here’s how it ends. This is why you have to understand how gutted this song makes you. The final stanza: “I’m so hollow. I’m so hollow.” I mean, again, you’ve got to hear him sing it, but like just this idea of being so hollow, like there’s nothing left. You’ve cried yourself to bits. You’re — anyway. Yeah, so I listened to that.

DUCKWORTH: Okay, wait. Before you have anything else to say, this is my favorite song that is sad that has words. Because I have a favorite song that is sad that doesn’t have words. By the way, like, Eric Clapton,  um, “Tears in Heaven” comes up. I’ve listened to that a million times. Like, “Yesterday” by the Beatles. But one of my all-time favorites, if not the all-time favorite, is “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinéad O’Connor. There’s a scientific debate about why it is that certain times in our life — it’s like imprinting. Like, the sad songs we hear in our adolescent and early-adulthood years are just, like, tattooed on our brains. And then when you hear sad songs, like, later, it’s like, they don’t gut you the way certain times in your life, those songs — and I was 15 years old, which is a very good time to listen to a very sad song. And the lyrics for “Nothing Compares 2 U” — and by the way, the two is the number “2” and the you is just “U,” so very prescient because, you know, this is 1985, before Twitter and social media. But Sinéad O’Connor opens with “It’s been seven hours and fifteen — ” I could actually sing this. “It’s been seven hours and fifteen days since you took your love away.” And then there’s orchestral music. “Da da da. I go out every night and sleep all day since you took your love away.” Okay, I’m not going to make you listen to me sing this terribly.

MAUGHAN: Yeah, but we are definitely going to do karaoke next time I’m in Philly.

DUCKWORTH: Definitely — you know who can come? Laurie Santos is such a fan of karaoke. Do you know Laurie?

MAUGHAN: Well, I know who Laurie is. I’ve never met her. I’m a huge fan of karaoke.

DUCKWORTH: Well, I’m a huge fan of Laurie Santos.

MAUGHAN: Okay, perfect. Well, let’s all go do it together.

DUCKWORTH: Laurie is the host of her own podcast — “The Happiness Lab,” and we’ve done a collaboration with No Stupid Questions a while ago, it predates our co-hosting. By the way, she’s an esteemed professor at Yale. And she is such a fan of karaoke — and I, I will, believe it or not, remember to get back to Sinéad O’Connor, because that is important — but Laurie Santos is such a fan of karaoke, I get this email in my inbox that says like, “Laurie Santos is coming to Philadelphia, because she loves karaoke, and she’s going to come and do, like, a sing-along night.” And I immediately think this is spam. However, I’m intrigued enough to text Laurie. I’m like, “WTF? Why is there spam about you and karaoke in Philadelphia? It’s just so specific and random.” And she said, “All facts, I’m coming, please come.” So, I don’t go because I have a conflict, but she’s coming again! I was like, you are kidding me! 

MAUGHAN: Wait, when? 

DUCKWORTH: I will get the dates. And if anybody is in Philadelphia and wants to come and hang out with me and Laurie Santos, And Mike, you are very welcome to join, it’s coming up. I think it’s in the fall, and it’s going to be a sing along. Anyway, I hope we play “Nothing Compares 2 U,” because I want to belt out the final stanza, if that’s what you call it. What do you call the thing that gets repeated in a song?

MAUGHAN: The chorus.

DUCKWORTH: Well, here’s the part that, like, I think it ends on. She just says over and over again, like, “Nothing compares, nothing compares to you.” And then it’s over. So, one other thing that is so interesting about sad songs is they’re not like Disney movies. It’s not like, oh, things are really dark, and then there’s light.

MAUGHAN: Oh, there’s no happily ever after.

DUCKWORTH: It’s just like sadness, and then more sadness, and then it’s   fade to black.

MAUGHAN: Okay, but to Colin’s question: why do we do that? Why do we feel that? I will say, for myself, I think that there’s this element of: one, I don’t want to go burden a bunch of other people. And, yes, during a horrible breakup, your friends are there, but — I’m sorry, I’m not trying to gender stereotype but a lot of men are just kind of like, “You good?” “Yeah.”

DUCKWORTH: Go ahead, put down your whole half of the species.

MAUGHAN: There’s less, maybe, emotional support in general. Then, I also just naturally hate being a burden to other people. And so, if I’m in a bad spot, a song allows me to connect with someone. I know when James Blunt is singing “Goodbye My Lover” and talking about how hollow he feels, then it’s like I’m not alone. Somebody knows how I feel. And I feel an emotional connection even though it’s not to another person, per se.

DUCKWORTH: You know, we recently had this conversation about humor: like, why do we laugh? Why do we find things funny? What could be the evolutionary advantage? And I think the take home from that was, in a word, connection. In two words, social connection. And I think, in a way, this — like, why do we listen to sad songs? I mean, I think that’s also the answer, this kind of feeling of being connected. And I’ll just say that the paradox of listening to sad music, it’s like, wait, why are you listening to something — you know, Colin’s girlfriend, like, wait, why are you making yourself cry? Like, why are you digging the hole deeper? And it has been interesting to psychologists, so I think you’ve heard of Kahneman and Tversky. I’ll just tell you a, an abridged version of a conversation I had with Barbara Tversky.

 MAUGHAN: Yes, of course — I mean, she’s the widow of the great Amos Tversky, who was Danny’s closest collaborator all those years.

DUCKWORTH: Correct. And there are two other things that may be less-widely known, but first, Barbara Tversky is a world-renowned psychologist in her own right, long-time professor at Stanford. And fact two is that for the very last chapter of Danny Kahneman’s life, Barbara Tversky was his partner. So, we were talking and emailing in the weeks immediately after Danny Kahneman died. And I said something about how I was, to my own puzzlement — like, I was like, why am I doing this? — I was literally Googling, “sad songs.” Like, open the Google browser, type in “sad poems.” And then, I said to Barbara, something along the lines of, “The funny thing is, like, I only read poetry when I’m sad.” You know, it’s not like I’m having a really good day and I’m like, I’m going to pick up a poem. And I was like, “Wow, what is this masochism? Like, what am I doing?” And she was like, “Well, of course you do that because one of the features of the human brain” — and it’s actually something that Danny Kahneman wrote about, and I think it’s, like, widely misunderstood. When we think of something — like here, I will give you some words: ice cream, seagull, sand, wave. Now you give me a word.

MAUGHAN: Ocean. Beach. Summer.

DUCKWORTH: Yes! Because the part of your brain that is, like, storing all these words, they’re all semantically related, and so they’re connected, right? So, you light up one, you light up another. And so, when you light up sadness, you’re thinking sad thoughts, you’re in a sad mood, you do not think about, like, roller coasters, laughter. So, that was one thing — you know, I’m not going to say that this is, like, what Professor Barbara Tversky thinks is the be-all-and-end-all explanation for why we listen to sad songs when we’re sad, but she did point out that the brain has this feature of just sort of, like, lighting up one thing and then, you know, other things that are related kind of just light up automatically. And I sent her a paper that had come out, I think, just months before, so it was very new, and it’s by a professor who’s very famous, named Joshua Knobe. Have you ever heard of Joshua Knobe? 

MAUGHAN: I have not.

DUCKWORTH: He’s really, like, a badass. And he’s at Yale. I don’t know if he does karaoke with Laurie Santos there.   And I’ll tell you a little bit about the research study, but first I’ll just say that when Joshua Knobe was younger than he is now, he knew of an indie rock musician who would sing these, like, really baleful, sorrowful, ballads. And he was interviewed by The New York Times and he said, you know, whe would sing “heart-rending things that made people feel terrible.” And at one point, Joshua Knobe comes across a YouTube video of this singer and it had, like, a suicide motif. I mean, this is really dark. And so, he was like, why am I not running away from pain, and death, and sorrow? Like, why are we drawn to sad things? It’s like, why do I keep wanting to listen to this? Well, I need to tell you that they got married. They’re now husband and wife, Joshua Knobe and this singer. And I have to believe that, in addition to his just intrinsic interest, this topic of, like, “Why do people listen to sad songs?” is very personal for him. So anyway, he was last and, I guess, senior author, I assume, on this article called “On the Value of Sad Music.” In this research, they very specifically make the analogy between listening to a sad song and having a conversation. Again, like, their bottom line is like, you know, we listen to sad music because we want to feel connected. And at that moment, you want to be having a conversation with someone who gets you. And by the way, this isn’t just true for sadness, but also for happiness. And one thing that therapists are very good at is, like, you walk into your therapy session and maybe on that day, you’re just really angry. Or on that day you’re, like, riddled with anxiety. Or on that day you happen to be, like, really exuberant. And one thing that therapists and socially-intelligent people are good at is, like, reading that person’s emotion and then matching it. So, one of the problems that people have when they do not meet the other person’s emotional wavelength is that person then doesn’t feel connected to and they also don’t feel seen and heard. I will tell you, because, like, the happy ending is Jason and I are still married, but, like, in my very first years as a professor, I had just gotten a grant. And I don’t even know how much money it was for, but I was, like, exuberant. And I come home, and I’m just like, “Amazing news! Got the grant! Can’t believe it!” And Lucy and Amanda are like four and five — they were like, “Yay! Let’s go for ice cream!” Because all they knew is that, like, mom’s in a good mood, maybe we can get — 

MAUGHAN: Good news means ice cream. Everyone wants ice cream.

DUCKWORTH: And I say, “Yes! Let’s go out for ice cream.” And Jason was a total wet blanket and was like, “Ice cream is not healthy. It’s the middle of the week. I mean, congratulations.” But his mood and my mood were not the same. And so, what you’re advised to do when you’re training a therapist, and also just in general, is that you immediately try to read the emotion of the person that you’re talking to. And yes, if they’re sad, you meet them at sad. And if they’re happy and energetic, you meet them at happy and energetic. And it doesn’t mean you have to totally fake everything. But, you know, what is connection? It’s, like, being in the same place. So, I think your own experience is very resonant, so to speak, and the idea of listening to a sad song as, like, being in conversation with a very empathic friend or partner. But I think the bottom line is that when people are experiencing grief, or melancholy, they are feeling like the song is meeting them where they are. And so they’re feeling this kind of, like, connection. Because, you know, like, the opposite of being connected is being lonely.

MAUGHAN: That’s where I feel like what Colin’s doing with music, and what so many people have done, is really powerful because you also in those moments don’t want to drag other people down. If we’re supposed to help mirror other’s emotions or match them where they are or whatever and I’m in, like, a really terrible place because of this breakup or you’re in this bad place because of that thing, music can serve that role of helping to feel connection, helping to feel a conversation, where I don’t have to, like, bring everybody else to sit in my pigsty.

DUCKWORTH: You can quarantine a little bit. You’re like, “I know I’ve got this issue. Let me repeat play.”

MAUGHAN: And it can help you process it. So, there’s this professor of psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin named Simon McCarthy-Jones who wrote an article basically saying “why do sad songs make you feel good?” but with the focus on Adele songs.

DUCKWORTH: Love Adele, by the way. I don’t know if Adele has any happy songs, but, like, I love the Adele sad songs.

MAUGHAN: I do too! But he went through a bunch of different things. One of the things was, you know, you feel closer to other people, which I think we’ve noted already. He says “Adele’s sad music can be a friend to us.” What I thought was really interesting, though, is: sometimes it triggers nostalgia more than sadness. Now, there’s listening to sad songs and diving into nostalgia, like remembering the good times, helping to process the emotion, but also, like, letting myself feel the pain of the breakup, listening to “Goodbye My Lover” for like two months straight. But where I think  it gets dangerous is when you go from nostalgia to rumination.

DUCKWORTH: Right. I mean, rumination is like an endless loop. So, it sounds like visiting is okay, but taking up residence is not.

MAUGHAN: Like, when I listen to a sad song, Colin, for a while, I think it’s probably helpful, but if not careful, it can cross the line into being hurtful, if I take up residence there.

DUCKWORTH: So, Mike, you and I would love to hear the thoughts of our listeners on this topic. If you have a favorite tearjerker song that you find particularly moving, please let us know. Maybe you want to tell us what the song means to you. Record a voice memo in a quiet place with your mouth close to the phone and email us at NSQ@freakonomics.com. Maybe we will play it on a future episode of the show. And if you like the show even a fraction as much as your favorite sad song, the very best thing you can do is to tell a friend. You can also spread the word on social media or leave a review in your favorite podcast app.

Still to come on No Stupid Questions: If sad music can comfort you, what can happy music do?

MAUGHAN: I mean, the first few songs, it’s like, “That one’s annoying. No, let’s not listen to that.” Da, da, da. By the fourth or fifth song, it was like, “Okay, we’re, like, feeling it.”

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Now, back to Mike and Angela’s conversation about sad songs.

DUCKWORTH: You know, that makes me, um, think of this research on depressed people versus non-depressed people. There’s this reasonably well-known finding that depressed people tend to listen to a lot of sad music. And it’s — actually, the first author is Millgram. And when I first was like, “Oh, Milgram?” —  

MAUGHAN: Like, Stanley Milgram?

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, like Stanley Milgram? Like, the guy with the shock machine? And by the way, Milgram is not alive anymore. Milgram is a psychologist from a generation or two ago. But it’s not that Milgram. It’s Millgram with two L’s. I can only imagine how much confusion there is for somebody who is —

MAUGHAN: You’ve got to change your last name at that point.

DUCKWORTH: I know, right? But anyway, this Millgram is more recent. And, um, Milgram and co-authors studied depressed versus non-depressed people, and basically did some choice tasks to see how much they preferred sad music to non-sad music. And indeed, they find that people who are depressed have a — an exaggerated preference for sad music compared to people who are not depressed, you know, who are matched on demographics. 

MAUGHAN: I mean, I’m curious because that would signify to me that that’s not helpful or healthy because it’s just perpetuating —

DUCKWORTH: Well, that’s the thing that was so interesting about this study because it’s like: wait a second, why are depressed people doing something that’s taking them in a direction that they really shouldn’t try to go. And so, then what happened next was that another set of researchers published a study, and this is in this journal whose name is Emotion, and it is a journal about emotion. 

MAUGHAN: Aptly named.

DUCKWORTH: Yes, aptly named. But they started with this question of, like: was the Millgram study right? Like, they wanted to repeat the study themselves and see if it was still true.

MAUGHAN: Right, do depressed people listen to more sad music?

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, exactly. And then, they wanted to see if they could answer the question “why?” in a more satisfying way. Well, the first thing is that they do replicate the findings. So, they recruit a whole new batch of depressed and non-depressed people. They give them a bunch of music. Actually, all instrumental music. So, basically they had happy, neutral, and sad instrumental music. And yeah, apparently people who are suffering from clinical depression are drawn like a magnet to sad songs more than non-depressed people. But then the really interesting question is why? And so they asked everybody in these experiments questions that would basically try to get at the root of this preference. And in fact, people with depression do not report that they choose sad music because it makes them more sad. They actually say it’s relaxing.

MAUGHAN: Hmm. So, it’s a coping mechanism. It’s in no way causal. It’s not like sad music makes you sadder. It’s, “This helps me cope with my sadness.”

DUCKWORTH: Yes. Now, I did not see reasons like: “I feel connected, I feel seen.” “It’s like having a conversation with somebody who really gets how I’m feeling.”

MAUGHAN: Especially because it’s orchestral, though, it doesn’t have lyrics anyway.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, although, I’m going to tell you my favorite non-lyric — I’m such a music, um, what’s the word for somebody who knows nothing? Just, like, “ignoramus”? So I don’t know what I’m talking about, but there is this one incredibly sad song. I have to look it up because I have to make sure I don’t butcher this. Have you ever listened to Bach’s orchestral suite number — let’s see — number three?

MAUGHAN: I would not know that by name. I may know it by music.

DUCKWORTH: Okay, wait, I’m going to play you just a strain of this. Tell me if you think this is sad.

MAUGHAN: Oh, of course. Of course. I know this.

DUCKWORTH: Right? This is the only kind of classical music I know. Like, things that people play when they’re busking in the town square. Do you find that sad?

MAUGHAN: I do find it — uh, the word that actually came to mind is, like, “ruminating.” I’m curious, though, because what we’ve talked about is that sad songs can be a conversation and you feel seen. That strikes me as very different though than orchestral music that doesn’t engage me in conversation. There are no words that are helping me feel like someone’s processing my emotion. The music that you just shared was more like — yeah, it’s relaxing. It’s soothing. But I don’t think that that would help me feel like I’d engaged in conversation or felt seen the same way that maybe an Adele, or a James Blunt, or Eric Clapton would do.

DUCKWORTH: Do you not listen to instrumental music when you’re sad?

MAUGHAN: I listen to instrumental music mostly when I’m highly focused at work and trying to get something done.

DUCKWORTH: And you don’t want lyrics, because — yeah.

MAUGHAN: I don’t think it’s what I turn to when I’m sad.

DUCKWORTH: Well, I’m going to argue — on the basis of nothing, right? Because I don’t play music. I don’t listen to it very much. But I think that many people do feel like having an experience with instrumental classical music is like having a conversation, and there is a communication. It’s like abstract painting, something I also do not appreciate very much, right?   Like, for me, when I walk through an art museum, if it doesn’t have a person in the painting, or at least, like, flowers that a person could have had, right? It’s just like a big blob of, like, red — you know, I have very little appreciation, honestly, for that. It’s growing because my mom has gotten really into abstract painting, so she makes blobs of red  and stuff like that. And I’m trying to understand. But I think when my mom talks about abstract art, it is, for her, in fact, the distillation, like the essence, of an emotion or an idea. So, for her, it is a conversation. And I think there is some artist, whose name is escaping me, who has said something like, “Songs with words, with lyrics, are like paintings with figures and the music that we listen to without words is like abstract art.” So maybe, you’re just walking through the museum with Angela Duckworth. Mike Maughan and Angela are like, “Wait, where are the pictures of the people? ’Cause like, I don’t know what this blob of red is supposed to mean.” Where other people are like, “Come on, Bach is talking to you across three centuries.”

MAUGHAN: That is fair. And look, I’m glad that different people respond to different things in different ways. Then I also want to say that part of me is drawn to heavy books and sad books, because I think it’s really important to acknowledge that we live in a really challenging world. And I, I know some really close friends of mine who are like, “Oh, I don’t want to read that. It’s sad.” And no judgment either way, like they can choose what they want to engage with. But I do think that is really important for me, and I would encourage others to engage with some of these stories and some of the realities of what’s around us. This book that we’ve talked about before called Evicted that goes through this psychological, and social, and emotional impact of growing up in a really financially-limited setting where you’re constantly being evicted.

DUCKWORTH: It’s, like, Matthew Desmond, is that right? It’s the Princeton sociologist.

MAUGHAN: But I think it’s important to confront these things. Music can help us through a sad situation, but it also can help us tell the truth. And I think we should engage in things that are really heavy and sad in a way that just helps us see our world more holistically.

DUCKWORTH: So, this is very different, right, than, like, listening to sad music to feel connected, to feel like you’re having a conversation, to — I guess if you’re depressed maybe it helps you relax. Like, you’re talking about a kind of deeper function of confronting the dark parts of our circumstances. But I have to tell you, Mike, my reaction is, like, I want to watch Ted Lasso. Like, there’s a reason, for me, when I go to bed, I mean, I’m reading this kind of, like, beach novel by Ruth Reichl. It, is set in Paris and there’s, like, you know, a young woman and it’s got food scenes and, you know, there are these amusing characters. And like, let me tell you, it is not Evicted. It is not a social commentary. I mean, I guess I agree with you, but I’m sort of thinking to myself, like, so often, don’t we turn to music, and to art, and literature for what we want and not what we should have? To me, I spend all day doing things that are, like, serious and hopefully good for the world. And then in those half-hours before bed, you know, the 30 minutes I have before I, like, lose consciousness, I want to read about food in Paris and watch Ted Lasso.

MAUGHAN: I think what maybe you’re saying is you want some sort of escape or connection to something more placid, more healing, more chill. 

DUCKWORTH: I’m saying that, like, I’m regulating my mood, right? I think though, like, you know, kind of to Colin’s question: Why do we listen to, like, Simon & Garfunkel if that’s your vibe? Or whatever, like, Sinéad O’Connor — whatever it’s going to be — I think as long as you have some awareness — as long as you’re like, “Oh, I’m listening to this and, wow, I’m getting in a complete tailspin here and, like, I am taking up residence and not visiting a sad place.” Like, or I guess for me it’s like, maybe not at this moment in my life is it the time that I’m going to read Evicted, but maybe after I finish writing my own book and I’m not in a dumpster fire of my own anxiety,  like, maybe that would be a good time. I guess some awareness. I feel like that’s maybe the take home. Not that we should all go out and listen to sad music or that we should all read Evicted, but just that we should have some awareness of what we’re doing.

MAUGHAN: And look, I went through a very stressful period at work recently. And I love to read.  I read all the time, but for a period of several months, like, I just couldn’t wrap my head around reading anything, because I was so stressed and so much was going on.

DUCKWORTH: Oh, what? Really? I thought you were going to tell me you were reading, like, embarrassing beach novels.

MAUGHAN: No, I just — my brain had no excess capacity.

DUCKWORTH: You didn’t read anything?

MAUGHAN: I mean, I tried reading, like, a John Grisham novel or like a Jack Reacher that are just pure beach read, but I couldn’t even go there, let alone read Evicted.

DUCKWORTH: So what did you do?

MAUGHAN:   I mean, I, I think it was all such a blur, but it was probably more music, I guess?   I do think this idea, though, of connection, as we’ve discussed, is the key to all of this in one way or another. The reason I think it’s important to read sad things is to be connected, to understand other people’s situation that is different than mine. I also acknowledge not everyone has the emotional space to go take on anything else.

DUCKWORTH: Well, Mike, I want to bring us home on this topic by bringing up something that I actually don’t have a brilliant answer to, but I just think is so interesting. I watched a TED Talk once about sad music, and I think it was actually all instrumental, because, like, the guy sat down on a piano bench and he started playing. And he played minor chords, right? And of course, I know nothing about this because I’m such a music ignoramus. But, I I will say that one of the theories about music is that your heart rate and the tempo of the music are actually — like, they come into synchronicity. Like, if you start listening to music that has a very fast tempo, even if you don’t get up and dance, your heart rate will go up. And if you listen to something really slow, an adagio — is “adagio” the word for slow?

MAUGHAN: That’s a great question for someone else.

DUCKWORTH: God, do you know as little as I do? Where is Jason Duckworth when you need him? Um, anyway —

MAUGHAN: “Adagio” means slow.

DUCKWORTH: Ah, good. When you can’t get Jason Duckworth, you got Google. But, like, I think that’s really another level of this, right? That like, when you listen to things that are upbeat and fast-paced, you quite literally become more upbeat and fast-paced yourself at some physiological level. So, I guess I wanted to know whether you ever upregulate your mood by listening to the opposite of a sad, slow song.

MAUGHAN: Oh, absolutely. And I think that’s what I think is so interesting about Colin’s, Colin’s girlfriend walking in. I just picture him you know, laying there crying, listening to Sound of Silence. And she’s like, “Why are you doing this to yourself?” Like you don’t have to do that. Go listen to something fun, go on a hike, go whatever. Listening to fun, upbeat music — when I’m, like, in a “meh” sort of mood, that can genuinely change my mood in a really important way. I mean, I was driving with a friend the other day. I was in kind of a bad mood and just said to her, like,  “Look, just find some happy, fun music on Spotify and let’s put it on.” And, I mean, the first few songs, it’s like, “That one’s annoying. No, let’s not listen to that.” Da, da, da. By the fourth or fifth song, it was like, “Okay, we’re, like, feeling it.”   And then, I was in a much better place and it was, like, helping to get out of the bad mood.  So, I think there’s a huge place for stuff like that — at least for me, personally.

DUCKWORTH: Do you want to share a happy song?

MAUGHAN: I think my greatest happy song is “We Are Young” by the band Fun — which by the way, I came out of a Chicago Cubs game when I was in grad school and there was a cover band playing “We Are Young” by Fun, and everyone inside the bar was singing it, and everyone on the streets in Wrigleyville was singing it, and it is one of the happiest moments of my entire life, and that is why that song is so epic to me, is that memory of like, everyone just singing along to “We Are Young.”

DUCKWORTH: Okay, well, I’m going to share a happy song. If I were going to do karaoke with you and Laurie Santos, I might pick “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles. “De de de de, here comes the sun, I say it’s all right, ‘cause do do do do do do do do do.” Am I making you smile?

MAUGHAN: Yes, you are making me smile. Mostly because it’s you singing, though. I don’t know that the Beatles could make me smile as much. So maybe, Colin, that’s the thing. When you’re working on your emotions, have your girlfriend sing to you. Don’t just listen to the songs themselves.

DUCKWORTH: Mike, in the words of the Beatles, and from the song, “Here Comes the Sun,” if Colin does that, “it’s alright.” 

Coming up after the break: a fact-check of today’s episode and stories from our NSQ listeners.

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And now, here’s a fact-check of today’s conversation:

Angela says that Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” came out in 1985 when Angela was 15 years old. The song was released that year, but not by Sinéad O’Connor. Prince wrote the song for the band the Family. It was released on the group’s only studio album, but did not find commercial success. O’Connor recorded a version of the song on her second studio album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, released in 1990, and it became a worldwide hit.

Later, Angela explains that a 2019 study published in the journal Emotion investigated depressed and nondepressed people’s preferred type of emotional music. She says that researchers allowed participants to choose between happy, neutral, and sad instrumental music. We should note that researchers also included musical excerpts known to represent feelings of fear, which allowed the study’s authors to examine whether depressed people have a particular preference for sad music, or for music conveying negative emotions more broadly. The results show that they prefer sadness, specifically, in their music.

Finally, if you’re in Philadelphia and you also love karaoke, you can join Angela and Laurie Santos for a sing-a-long this fall. We’ll post a link to register for the event in our episode show notes. The theme of the night is “GIRL POWER,” but “non-girls” are also encouraged to attend.

That’s it for the fact-check.

Before we wrap today’s show, let’s hear some thoughts about last week’s episode on humor.

Jordan BROWN: Hey, Mike and Angela. This is Jordan Brown from the Hudson Valley in New York. I really enjoyed your episode analyzing sense of humor, and I was reminded of a quote by E. B. White who said, “Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process, and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.” But I won’t leave you with that. I’ll leave you with my favorite joke, which was written by B. J. Novak, who said, “If I could have dinner with any person dead or alive, I would choose alive.”

Alex JAHRUAS: As a trained linguist, my favorite kind of joke involves homonyms. This is a very good one. “A minister, a priest, and a rabbit walk into a blood donation center. The rabbit says, ‘I think I’m a typo.’” 

Richard BOYER: It’s Richard Boyer in Holiday, Utah. “What did the street cleaner say to the horse? I’ve had enough out of you.”  Keep going, you guys. You’re the best. 

That was Jordan Brown, Alex Jahraus, and Richard Boyer. Thanks to them and to everyone who shared their jokes with us. And remember, we’d love to hear your thoughts about why people like to listen to sad songs. Send a voice memo to NSQ@Freakonomics.com, and you might hear your voice on the show!

Coming up on No Stupid Questions: What does it mean to be an adult?

MAUGHAN: I called home maybe 12 times ‘cause I was so homesick. And I thought, maybe I’m not as much of an adult as I thought I was.

That’s coming up next week on No Stupid Questions.

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No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I (Mostly) Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. The senior producer of the show is me, Rebecca Lee Douglas, and Lyric Bowditch is our production associate. This episode was mixed by Greg Rippin and Jasmin Klinger. We had research assistance from Daniel Moritz-Rabson. Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra. The Bach recording that Angela played is the Air from Orchestral Suite no. 3 in D Major, performed by the Netherlands Bach Society. You can follow us on Twitter @NSQ_Show. And you can check out video clips of Mike and Angela on the Freakonomics Radio Networks TikTok and YouTube Shorts page. If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to NSQ@Freakonomics.com. To learn more, or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakonomics.com/NSQ. Thanks for listening!

DUCKWORTH: “Hello darkness, my old friend. Something, something, something, something.”