This is a question about physical response, but it’s also about music. I’m not sure there is a definitive answer for it, so we may have to go on opinions. So I put it in this forum, but if a mod feels it should go elsewhere, please feel free to move it.
There are numerous songs that give me goosebumps. Some even give me chills up and down my spine. Some make me cry, and not because they’re sappy. I can’t accurately quantify what it is about them that causes this involuntary response.
I just got the Stax/Volt Singles box, and I was listening to William Bell’s original recording of “Any Other Way.” Well, you know how sometimes another artist will cover a song and make it their own? I followed it up with the ultra-rare Canadian record of Jackie Shane singing the same song, and within seconds, the hairs on my arms were standing up, and I had goosebumps all over. It is an infinitely superior reading of the song, but I don’t know how to describe what makes it “better.”
Does anybody else get this reaction? Or have any ideas about why it happens?
I react this way often, and often wonder why this happens. I’ll be interested in reading some of the responses and possible reasons as to why this happens.
I got goosebumps sitting here just thinking about songs that do this to me. It is a very unique feeling, one that you could maybe compare to seeing a certain movie, but still different.
In regards to another artist covering something and making it their own, the best example of that for me would have to be Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah, which again without even listening to it, gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.
I think music does this to us because it is more open to interpretation than other forms of communication such as movies, which is not to say movies aren’t open to interpretation, just not as often as music IMO. This interpretation in turn allows us to use music to soothe or sate our particular mood, to let our minds wander and also to just sit there and reminisce about life altering events.
I think so - I think what you’re saying is that many other artistic media use language to reach their audience - music (even sung music which relies on the emotional impact of the words more than the words themselves in many cases) does away with much of the “middle man” of language and is a direct plug into our emotional/psychological/spiritual core.
Does that make sense? So when Jeff Buckley sings Hallelujah (a great example) the emotions plug straight into me - the words themselves secondary to the moment created in that music. Same thing with effective modern art and movies that rely on visuals more than talking…
I get goosebumps from the end of a song. That moment in a performance where the music has died, and the audience is still quiet. Everything is just kind of hanging there, while people digest what just happened, and then respond to it.
Are you talking about a physical response or an emotional response? Or is that the question?
My goosebump reactions are usually tied to an event connected with the song – the song will bring up a memory. But that’s just nostalgia, which isn’t the reaction you guys are discussing.
Sad, spooky songs give me goosebumps – Long Black Veil, He Sang Dixie – and intensely emotional, dark songs like Buenos Noches from a Lonely Room – but I’ll tear up if any piece of music is especially well done and with a lot of feeling. Doesn’t matter if it’s instrumental or if there are words.
I was wondering primarily about what causes the physical response. It may very well be tied to the emotional response the song provokes. But why goosebumps? And why only some songs but not others?
I get that response from a lot of things that I find beautiful or moving, be they paintings, music, or even an exceptional sip of liquor. If you’re open to the experience of being so moved, the complexity and joy of partaking in something special and can heighten sensual awareness to the point of involuntary physical response. I think many people are so attuned, but many more are not. That’s why there are such things as connoisseurs and such things as mere aficionados.
And sometimes I write like the liner notes to a reissued jazz CD.
There’s really very little useful distinction to be made here. Emotions aren’t some disembodied spirits flitting through the empty chambers of your brain – they’re caused by, and cause, physical phenomena. It’s no accident that we use the word “feeling” for both.
Antonio Damasio’s made a career out of exploring the neurobiology of emotion; his 1999 book The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness is an outstanding introduction to the subject. Anyone wanting to make sense of the way non-physical phenomena (like music or other emotional experiences) invoke somatic responses (and vice versa) should definitely check it out – Damasio’s a very good writer in addition to being an outstanding scientist, and his books are a joy to read.
