Source: Radio New Zealand
It’s a situation that will be familiar to many of us: you’re hurting after the demise of a romantic relationship, and you hear a song, with its key, rhythm and lyrics, perfectly putting sound and words to the feeling in your heart.
You put it on high rotation, drawing out the pain and drip feeding your soul.
“It’s the emotion around that that a break-up song can help shift,” says Chris O’Connor, a music therapist at Auckland’s Raukatauri Music Therapy Trust.
“You know, emotions, I think it is fair to say, don’t serve us when they are bottled up and when we’re not expecting them.”
Break-up songs are high-income earners for the music industry. What would we listen to if Adele didn’t need to constantly dig herself out of a break-up hole? What pain will Taylor Swift mine in her songwriting now that she is months away from marriage?
Music therapist Chris O’Connor.
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We love a good break-up song, even if we are not currently reeling from a break-up. But why do we love them, and what goes into making one?
There is a profound mystery surrounding the way music affects our emotions and physical responses.
Patrick Whelan, a Harvard Medical School lecturer who has researched music and the brain, puts some of it down to evolutionary biology. Early mammals relied heavily on hearing to avoid predators, the sounds fueling a hyperfocused and hyperattentive state, according to Harvard Medical Magazine.
Then, there’s the Mozart effect, where studies have indicated that listening to the 18th-century composer’s music can improve spatial reasoning skills, increase IQ scores and reduce the frequency of seizures in some people with epilepsy. However, some of those results have been disputed by other academics.
Music breaks down our sense of being separate, and lifts us up in something unified, says O’Connor, adding that this is amplified when music is listened to live.
“Music is kind of unique in that it can do that so quickly and powerfully.”
Music therapy, done in groups or individually, can help participants process hardship, improve their ability to socialise and move through stuck emotions, especially when a song can take them back to a time and place of difficulty. Those who come to O’Connor for a private session can expect a room full of instruments, a record player and speakers to play music digitally. The client might want to play music or simply listen.
“Really, what I’m doing… is trying to find what sparks a person.
“I’m sort of sitting there listening as carefully as I can and turning up all my Spidey senses up to 11 to understand what it is about music that this particular person is excited about.”
Break-up songs help us to get stagnant emotions moving again, says O’Connor.
“Motion is an important part of the word emotion, and motion is about movement.”
Break-up songs enable you to wallow in sadness, says Godfrey de Gut, a musician, composer and ensemble arranger who teaches songwriting theory at the University of Auckland.
However, “you might choose to find songs of empowerment that pull you through the break up and remind you that you’ve gained more control of your life, or that it wasn’t your fault.
“I think we always need cues in terms of ways to remind us to feel a particular way or remind us of connections that we don’t need anymore.”
Yes, there is a well-trodden path to writing popular break-up songs, but artists have no problem veering off that track to surprise their listeners, says de Gut.
Minor chords, the sad sounding sibling to the happy major chords, are common in break-up songs. However, these songs are broader than lament, with some aiming to empower, he said, using Dua Lipa’s ‘Don’t Start Now’ as an example.
This video is hosted on Youtube.
“That’s an uptempo break-up song… It’s in a minor key, but it has a lot of major chord elements, [that] feel uplifting when they arrive.”
(My favourite break-up song, ‘Dog Days are Over’ by Florence and the Machine, isn’t technically a break-up song, and it’s in G Major with an upbeat tempo.)
This video is hosted on Youtube.
A hook in a song that starts with a major chord often provides a contrast that songwriters use to “amplify the message”, says de Gut. A hook can be musical or lyrical and is often the most memorable part of a song, like the song’s fingerprint or ID.
An example of this is in de Gut’s personal favourite break-up song, ‘I Don’t Know What To Do With Myself’. The song was first released by Dusty Springfield in 1964 and has been covered by numerous artists, including the White Stripes in 2003.
This video is hosted on Youtube.
In de Gut’s songwriting courses, he encourages students to come up with a melody first and then build the lyrics around it. That goes for all songs, not just break-up songs.
It is the “thing that connects with the human most quickly and then everything is secondary to that, for instance, the words or the groove or the beat.
“So, don’t think you’re going to be able to make a great break-up song unless your melody is really good.”
How the vocalist delivers the song can have more of an impact on O’Connor than the chords that are used. He also likes when a break-up song mashes together lyrics that convey heartbreak with a jovial beat and major chords.
“It can actually be super effective.”
Arguably, the best break-up song is the one that feels like it was written for your specific break up.
Billboard Magazine created an extensive 100-song list that boldly claims to contain the “Best Break-up Songs of All Time”. Dolly Parton’s 1974 hit ‘I Will Always Love You’ comes in at number one. The song’s more famous rendition was sung by Whitney Houston for the film The Bodyguard.
De Gut’s favourite break-up song by a New Zealand artist is ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ by Gotye, who collaborated with New Zealand singer-songwriter Kimbra.
This video is hosted on Youtube.
For O’Connor, numerous New Zealand artists have provided us with break-up anthems, including the Phoenix Foundation’s ‘Sally,’ The Mutton Birds’ ‘Like this Train’ and SJD’s Helensville.
Kara Richard, the host of RNZ’s Music 101, recently asked listeners to text in their favourite break-up songs. Of the dozens of responses, no two were the same, ranging from Slipknot’s ‘Vermilion Pt. 2,’ an acoustic breakaway from their usual growling sound, to Billboard toppers like ‘Iris’ by the Goo Goo Dolls and under-the-radar indie’s like Marlon Williams’ ‘Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore’.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand