Music And Nostalgia: Involuntary Memories

Sometimes I’ll be driving to work, dissociated, mindlessly coasting along on the freeway when all of a sudden, the painfully familiar first note of what used to be my favorite song starts to play. I am suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense of longing, a confusing mix of emotions that can only be nostalgia. 

Every period of my life, every big event, every turning point, has a song associated with it. Every time I hear “Solar Power” by Lorde, all I can think about is spending every day at the beach with my best friends, sunburnt to a crisp, and laughing until I can’t breathe.

One second into the intro, and tears are already welling up in my eyes as I drive back to school, anticipating the stress of balancing my college life. Like clockwork, the sense of impending doom begins to sink in. 

Music has the ability to suck us back into moments from our history, whether we want to revisit them or not. It then becomes really easy to compare present moments in our lives to versions of that past that feel significantly simpler. But it isn’t all just yearning; there is some actual science behind these feelings.

Dr. Kelly Jakibowski at Durham University conducted a scientific study on these “involuntary memories” and found that the emotions evoked by a song can shape the tone and evaluation of a memory. So when I hear the upbeat chorus of “Solar Power,” not only do I remember the summer before college, but the time itself feels brighter, warmer, and happier, likely freer than it actually was. 

The effects of this musically induced nostalgia can be comforting and allow us to reconnect with who we once were, but it also leads to a romanticization of the past. When I remember the moments I associate with songs, they are slightly deconstructed, hazy versions of the events that actually occurred.

If it is a happy memory, I tend to overlook the difficult moments, and if it is a more painful time, I ignore all the good. These softer interpretations of our past are not false realities, but they are altered in a way that can make it difficult to move on and recognize the beauty of the present.

Nostalgia isn’t all bad, but it can lead to unfair comparisons. Everyone has that one song that comes on literally every single time they shuffle their ‘liked’ songs on Spotify, mine is Harry Styles’ “Daylight.” No matter what I’m doing when I hear it, I am instantly transported back to junior year of high school.

For a brief second, the stress from midterms fades away, and I become the 16-year-old girl I once was, familiar and “carefree.” This momentary form of time travel makes me wish that I could just go back, even for a day, to that idealized past.

The complete truth, whether I realize it or not, is that the time period of my life I associate with “Daylight” was not always flawless; I was dealing with a whole other set of stressors that felt just as difficult at the time. 

When I long for the past, I tend to appreciate where I am now a little less. I have become so certain that my life used to be easier, that it is difficult to see the future as anything other than an obstacle; something that I just need to “get through.” 

But the future isn’t just something that we need to fight. As we grow and move through new eras in our lives, new songs are constantly defining us. In 5 years, I will probably hear “If It Makes You Happy” by Sheryl Crow (my current favorite) and feel a very similar sense of longing for the version of myself that I am now.

Nostalgia is a reminder of how much we have changed, and although we have left behind times that felt “perfect,” we are also constantly experiencing new ones. It is impossible to fight against time, but we can learn to move alongside it, letting our favorite songs from when we were 16 remind us how much we have grown instead of holding on to who we used to be. 

• #change
• #memories
• #music
• #nostalgia