to say some music fills me with dread?

[Blankspace4]

I’ve always found music particularly evocative - a song is much more likely to make me cry (or be filled with joy!) than a book or even film. This isn’t necessarily at the time, more when I hear songs which remind me of a certain period in my life.

Just heard a song (Gwen Stefani, nothing emosh!) that was out around 2005 and it’s filled me with such utter dread / guilt (I was in an unhappy relationship at that time, cheating too, and living somewhere I found highly isolating and depressing). Can’t shake that mood off now!

Does anyone else have this level of response to music and if so - care to share?

goes off and listens to something with positive memories to reprogramme mind

that's because of the devil's tritone... it's a real thing

What’s the devils tritone?

Yes, 2 in particular make me feel physically sick. I really liked them when they first came out and then I fell pregnant but used to listen to them a lot while commuting, the morning sickness turned me right off them and now it I hear them I actually feel that morning sickness again.
Also one while seeing a guy from a long time ago. I was absolutely daft for him and he really messed me about (I was pretty young) everytime I hear that I want to smash something up.

Yes, some Portishead music does this to me. No idea why!

Yes I get this, some music makes me elated, some makes me cry and some makes me miserable.

I'm sure it be along the lines of scents being nostalgic (not sure if that's true, but makes sense to me).

Hans Zimmer's music does that to me.... unfortunately DH loves it. I have to leave the room when he plays it.

Yes scent is similar for me too. Music and scent seem to press a particularly emotional ‘memory button’ whether that’s positive or negative. Enough to be truly mood shifting though!!!

Yep, it’s a thing. Emotions can be linked to physical sights/sounds/smells.

The tritone is a particular group of three pitches that has been used historically to signify dread, originally as part of the funeral Mass called the dies irae. You won't just have heard it in one piece of music, it's used in loads of film and TV music as well. Have a look on YouTube.

But any music can take you straight back to a time where you heard it. If you have kids, think of something like Away in a Manger or Winding the Bobbin Up and you'll be thinking of nativity plays and playgroups. Or your wedding dance music.

I can’t look at dahlias now...bizarre but when I was pregnant last summer we had some dahlias growing in the garden. The sun made them enormous with huge flowers. We sat out a lot in the heatwave and I was shattered with a lot of morning sickness. I can’t look at a dahlia now without feeling ill.

OK I know it's not how it was meant but I'm loving the idea of someone having Away In a Manger or Wind the Bobbin Up as their wedding dance song.

Anything by Lana del Rey fills me with absolute despair. Her voice is the epitome of tragedy. Dirgy melodies and depressing lyrics about mortality and sadness.

Bride and groom doing all the actions in the middle of the dance floor. Pull! Pull! Clap clap clap! Bemused family and friends looking on.

@MitziK very interesting, thank you!

Understand re music provoking memories, but for me (and others by the sound of it) there are certain songs which bring back a hell of a lot of emotion as well as the memory itself. Sometimes by hearing a song (or smelling a perfume, now it’s been mentioned!) I am immersively transported back there and takes a while to shake off (fab if it’s good, pretty rotten if it’s a bad one!!)

Of yes smells even more for me. I smell things sometimes while out I smell something and it brings such a familiar feeling, most of the time I couldn't actually like it to a specific thing or memory. I think I can remember smells from when I was very very you and don't even have an actual memory to match it.

This is definitely the case for me too.
It's amazing how a song can stir up so many emotions isn't it?
There was a song that was out in the summer of 1999 by Dina Carroll called "Without Love".
It honestly takes me right back to when I was heavily pregnant with my eldest. He'll be 20 next month, but sadly still a baby in his mind. He never said his first word.
When I hear that song now, the tears just stream!
It's nice in a way though as I can feel the happiness and warmth of holding him in my arms as a newborn baby with our whole lives in front of us and in that moment being blissfully unaware of what the future would hold.
I think the song was actually playing on the radio while I was giving birth as the emotions are so strong and help me remember every little detail.

@lilyannarose

I don't suffer from this in a negative way - quite the opposite in fact. I had a very problematic childhood with my mum and her many abusive boyfriends and growing up I used to hate what I used refer to as 'dad rock' type bands like led zeppelin or pink Floyd etc.
As a much older adult, a million light years later, I listen to the music and instead of it triggering me, it makes me feel free and elated because I'm not there anymore, they can't hurt me anymore and I can hear the music now for what it really is.

@bravelurker that’s awesome.

I feel dread when I listen to Fairy Tale of New York, which is such a good Christmas song. But it was playing the moment I crashed my car with my 1 year old in the back. We were thankfully ok, but everytime I hear it I have to turn it over.

Can't listen to David Gray. Takes me back to a few months at Uni when I was having an affair with a married man and my drinking was out of control. Makes me feel vulnerable.

Thank you @Blankspace4 .
Just read my post back and just to be clear my DM wasn't abusive but her many BF were.

I can’t listen to Cyndi Lauper Time After Time, it takes me back to a time I was suicidal. But there’s something in its tone which is very haunting and claustrophobic.

Burn by ellie Goulding brings back my morning sickness from dd.

Bettie Davis Eyes fills me with dread and makes me feel completely alone.

Some songs I listen to rarely because they take me back to certain (good) parts of my childhood and it's such a strong feeling I never want to lose it.

Others I can't listen to because they just hit me heavy on the chest, like the feelings I had back then when things were awful just come back.

And I have learned never to listen to my usually day to day stuff when I'm going through anything tough, otherwise it taints the music.

I can’t cope with Bridge Over Troubled Water because after dropping my mother at work one Friday morning we stopped the tape just before getting home as it was about to play - so she’d hear it first thing Monday. Monday never came for her, she died that weekend. It was the song that was played when her coffin was lowered at the crematorium, too, though I wasn’t there to see it - my siblings & I went to her funeral Mass & were then taken to the home of some family friends. Where I sat in the playhouse & was made to feel guilty-ungrateful for declining the doughnut that had been bought for me. Morning Has Broken leaves me absolutely broken for similar reasons - I walked into the church behind my mother’s coffin to it (it was her favourite hymn); clutching my father’s hand, my little sister doing the same on his other side. And everyone staring, then the soft rippling of pity being articulated spreading through the church. I have an absolute dread of encountering it during Mass, or even worse, at a wedding. When I was in my early/mid-twenties it was played during one Mass & I had to leave the church because I was having an actual flashback.

We know music definitely keys in to some important bits of the brain simply because of the positive outcomes that have been observed with regard to music & people with dementia. Am fairly sure people have looked at which bits of the brain light up on MRIs when people are listening to (various sorts of) music, too. Simply because that seems like A Thing Researchers Would Totally Do. Because neuroSCIENCE!!!

When I was about 4 or so my father took my brother & me to the Museum of the Moving Image still mourn its loss but that’s irrelevant here & before we went round, he sent me into the ladies’ loos. Alone. I’d never seen “Jaws” & I’d certainly not seen “Psycho”, but the famous music from both those films was, God alone knows why, played in those loos. Worse still, it wasn’t playing as I entered. It started as I was in a cubicle. Now the Jaws music very clearly tells you there is a big feck-off monster coming to eat you. And the Psycho strings? Definitely nightmare monster time. And the door to the toilets was too heavy for me to manage easily but luckily a couple of women wanted to come in & thus aided my escape. Think they were probably a bit startled by a tiny blur sprinting past with a wail of “daddy, there are monsters in the toilets!” I’m still not good with music in films that’s designed to heighten suspense or be “creepy”. Though I quite like the Danse Macabre

Music can be a bit like a 0-cal Proustian madeleine in lots of ways. As indeed can smells...

Oh & as a PP noted, there’s always the possibility The Devil’s Chord is getting to you, depending on what you’re listening to.