What does listening to a certain artist repeatedly teach us about navigating our relationships with friends, family, and romantic partners? It doesn’t matter if Adele or The Weeknd are on your go-to playlist; the songs can reveal a lot about you. It all has to do with attachment styles, or the normal ways that people act, think, and feel in relationships.
“I’m interested in the role music plays in people’s lives. Since humans started making music tens of thousands of years ago, songs across cultures have always focused on relationships — getting into one, maintaining one or breaking up — so I wondered, do people listen to music that mirrors their experiences in relationships?” says Ravin Alaei, who graduated with a PhD from the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science in 2019.
Alaei and professors Geoff Macdonald and Nicholas Rule from the Department of Psychology discovered that people’s unique attachment styles correspond with the lyrics of their favourite songs in a recent study that was published in the journal Personal Relationships.
In other words, for better or worse, we frequently listen to songs that express the emotions we are experiencing in a relationship.
“Lyrics matter, so pay attention to them,” says Alaei, who is also a physician who earned his MD at McMaster University.
“The lyrics of your favourite songs about relationships may help validate your thoughts and feelings,”he added.