“Music is the shorthand of emotion.” — Leo Tolstoy

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“The world’s most famous and popular language is music.” – Psy

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“Music is the BEST!” — Me/probably everyone else

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I mean, music IS the best, right??

When I think about music, a thing I’ve believed for some time is that people use music largely for one of two reasons: either to reflect their current emotional experience, or to shift their current emotional experience.

It is a belief founded entirely on my own response to music and my observations of others’ responses to music. Is it a hard, fast rule? No. Do I think it’s a valid and valuable way to think about music’s connection to emotion? Absolutely. And here’s why…

If you are a person who likes music (and unless you’re Captain Von Trapp, you probably are a person who likes music), and if you understand its relationship to your emotions, you can use music to do a lot of cool, regulation-type things.

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Consider a couple examples from my own life…

I am a babe who loves to WALK down the street. Like, W-A-L-K. It feels great to me. My walk is inspired by, among others, Beyoncé’s Get Me Bodied (Extended Mix) music video; Marcia Brady strutting to Bananarama in the Brady Bunch Movie; and Shea Couleé walking the runway in front of Naomi Campbell on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Doesn’t that walk SOUND great?!

For me, it takes a certain musical vibe to connect with THAT walk. So, if I’m commuting and I’m already feeling cute and confident and like THAT girl, I might select Gabriela by KATSEYE to reflect my internal vibe.

However, let’s say I’m trying to increase my sense of self and confidence before a difficult conversation. I might pop on No More (Baby I’ma Do Right) by 3LW to help my nervous system shift a bit.

The more I’ve reflected on the connection between music and emotions, the more value I’ve found for its role in my own personal regulation. And, the more I’ve seen others explore their own emotional connections to music, the more I’ve come to understand its nearly universal value as a tool for regulation in a variety of situations.

This is, of course, something we’ve understood intuitively for a long, long time. Indigenous peoples, non-Western cultural traditions, African and Black communities - all have used dance and movement for emotional processing for generations.

There is neurological value in bringing our intuitive understandings into consciousness by naming them. When we clock our autonomic patterns, we increase our emotional/somatic awareness, and we increase our capacity to choose new paths for regulation. If music is one of the paths you’d like to explore more, I offer the following playlists.*

I hope that they might serve as the beginning of your own musical regulation toolkit.  Start with these playlists, then create your own. AND, if you make any that you love, PLEASE share them with us!

Like we all said, “Music is the BEST!”

THE PLAYLISTS

Winter Walk - builds from gentle-to-banger with songs themed around winter

1. Winter - Tori Amos
2. Early in Winter - Gwen Stefani
3. Winter - Khalid
4. Cold Heart (PNAU Remix) - Elton John, Dua Lipa, PNAU
5. Hazy Shade of Winter - The Bangles

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Commute with Confidence - feeling engaged, energized, active, and ready to approach the day with flexibility; “Whatever comes, I will be okay.”

1. Too Easy - Connor Price
2. Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves - Aretha Franklin, Eurythmics
3. Masterpiece - Able Heart
4. Cuntissimo - MARINA
5. Her - Megan Thee Stallion

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Boundary Bangers - building sense of self; vibe with validation; “I am worth doing hard things for.”

1. The Healer - Digging Roots
2. No More (Baby I’ma Do Right) - 3LW
3. No More Drama - Mary J. Blige
4. Bulletproof - La Roux
5. It’s Not Right But It’s Okay (Thunderpuss Mix) - Whitney Houston, Chris Cox, Barry Harris

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Move that Body - you’ll get it

1. Water - Tyla
2. Gabriela - KATSEYE
3. Dracula - Tame Impala
4. girl, get up. - Doechii, feat. SZA
5. Hypnotized - Purple Disco Machine

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*When creating the playlists, I used the following guideline: the playlists would include 5 songs, be situation-specific, have a diversity in artists/styles, and include a range of energy levels. Once I selected the songs, I organized each playlist in order of song energy level from 1-5, so that you could choose which direction you’d like to shift your energy - listening from first-to-fifth if you’re looking to ramp up energy, or from fifth-to-first if you’re hoping to wind down a bit.