My old friend Erika once said to me, ‘If life had a soundtrack, what would be on it?’
Though my answer to her continually changes, responding to my mood and interests, I do have one thing figured out: It would be played on an iPod.
Steve Jobs let slip this week that Apple has sold 90 million iPods to date. That’s quite a lot, for a technology that wasn’t a functional pioneer in the field. We’ve had digital music for quite a while, and the iPod was far from the first portable player. I’ve grown up with Sony Walkmen, stereos, computers that play my CDs… Why the craze?
iPods are successful because they bring music into areas of life that would otherwise be without-soundtrack. My slim, elegant, convenient holds-all-my-music-and-then-some player adds a dimension to what might otherwise be boring chores. On the tube, when I’d otherwise be re-reading the ads for the hundredth time or trying not to make eye contact with fellow commuters… I now get to eye them with a sense of irony and the Bangles’ Manic Monday in my ears. Popping out to get lunch… I can clear my head of the morning’s meetings with a Sting tune. Breaking free of the office at the end of a Friday afternoon… I can kick-start my weekend with a little Jimmy Buffett. The music makes me feel good at times when otherwise, I’d be trudging along with the rest of London in February.
McGill University’s Daniel Levitin has an physiological explanation for this. Levitin heads McGill’s Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise, and his research demonstrates how music is hard-wired into the emotional areas of the brain.
In a recent New York Times article, he explains that first the brain analyses the structure and meaning of the music, then it releases dopamine, which produces a sense of pleasure and reward. At the same time, the cerebullum (which generally controls movement) reacts every time the song creates tension, by producing unresolved chords or changing tempo. (This appears to be, by the way, why we have to tap our toes or dance to a good song.)
When I was growing up, I had songs that were the soundtracks to high school and college. Now when I hear Breakfast at Tiffany’s (by Deep Blue Something), I’m transported back to learning how to drive. The old classic Oh What a Night takes me back to dancing around my dorm room at university. These sounds pull up the emotions, the thoughts and the context of those moments because they helped define them.
Now, as a professional in a public-transport city, I don’t have the luxury of long hours in a dorm full of friends or a car stereo. For this, I now have an iPod. I can’t tell you yet what will be on the 2007 soundtrack of my life, but I can tell you this: It will come out of the 1,334 songs in my pocket.
What is great about the iPod is the user interface. In the past I have been stuck with hard to use hardware and even worse software.At least with iPod the product looks nice. Steve jobs has just forgotten that 99% of the world does not use Apple computers. Getting my iPod to work on my computer is like get Microsoft to open up its code. The only advange of the iPod is that I listen to more music and ignore my surroundings including the cars and buses (which is not a good thing.)
By the way see what NYC is doing (this is from CNN)
NEW YORK (Reuters) — New Yorkers who blithely cross the street listening to an iPod or talking on a cell phone could soon face a $100 fine.
New York State Sen. Carl Kruger says three pedestrians in his Brooklyn district have been killed since September upon stepping into traffic while distracted by an electronic device. In one case bystanders screamed “watch out” to no avail.
Kruger says he will introduce legislation on Wednesday to ban the use of gadgets such as Blackberry devices and video games while crossing the street.
“Government has an obligation to protect its citizenry,” Kruger said in a telephone interview from Albany, the state capital.
“This electronic gadgetry is reaching the point where it’s becoming not only endemic but it’s creating an atmosphere where we have a major public safety crisis at hand.”
Tech-consuming New Yorkers trudge to work on sidewalks and subways like an army of drones, appearing to talk to themselves on wireless devices or swaying to seemingly silent tunes.
“I’m not trying to intrude on that,” Kruger said. “But what’s happening is when they’re tuning into their iPod or Blackberry or cell phone or video game, they’re walking into speeding buses and moving automobiles. It’s becoming a nationwide problem.”
How interesting that you saw that! The BBC covered it too. I initially set out to write about it, in fact, but found myself far more interested in WHY people are “getting lost” into the world of their iPods.
Your point about the interface is a good one though. Even walking down a busy London street, I can change songs without looking. Can’t beat that!
(Assuming I still manage to look both ways before crossing the street… My mother’s mantra from our childhoods still holds!)
I remember someone pointing out that a reason one-hit wonder songs conjure up nostalgia is that there was a well-defined point in your past, often in childhood, when this song appeared, was suddenly everywhere you went, and then equally suddenly was gone. So when you hear it again, it triggers memories of a narrow time slice. As opposed to something like Hotel California, which was playing since before you were born and throughout your life, so it tends not to have any particular locus in your memories.
Colin,
I think your point can be more generalized. If Hotel California were playing at a very significant point in your life, it would later trigger memories. Several generic hymns gained meaning for me when sung graveside, and still bring me back there.
I don’t mind having a soundtrack to my life, but one of the songs I want on there is John Cage’s 4’31″ – on repeat. The other day in the drugstore I could hardly keep mental track of my five-item shopping list against the assault of the store’s music. I have come to feel that music has changed too much from a meaningful source of emotion in life to being a tool of emotional manipulation. Try watching a movie with the sound off and see if the subtitles strike you as meaningful or banal without the audio cues.
I’ve got a headache! And the only prescription is more silence!
If you want to talk about music becoming a manipulative tool, try watching commercials with the sound off. Commercials on mute suddenly become, well, more commercial, more of a blatant sales pitch. Any sense of interest or humor evaporates.
Timely posting. I finished reading Daniel Levitin’s book; Your Brain on Music and am working on the review. It was a good read. I learned more about music than ever before. I also recently received an iPod shuffle and have been slowly getting into the use of it in my daily life. I did not have a device like this.
Thanks, Steve! I’m looking for a copy of Your Brain on Music myself; I’m fascinated by the theories. Do let me know how you get on with the iPod.
Thanks also to Colin and Andrew, for pointing out the other side of music’s power — it can annoy! I suppose one way to look at choosing our own soundtrack is an effort to counteract noises we don’t want.