Most of us already know intuitively that music affects emotion. After all, if you’re happy and you know it…
We build playlists for heartbreak, workouts, long drives, anxiety, focus, celebration, or grief. In fact, your favourite streaming service now does this for you. Here are some actual platform-curated playlists available at the time of writing: ‘Serotonin’, ‘Crying on the Dancefloor’, ‘Confidence Boost’, ‘Blood, Shred & Tears’. I searched for, ‘Sold out of Almond Croissants Blues,’ but I guess I’ll have to compile that myself or just have a word with Pret.
Recently, I’ve been reading about music, not just as a mainstream mood changer, but as a legitimate and evidence-informed emotional regulation strategy. In his 2025 book, 'Shift: Managing Your Emotions So They Don’t Manage You', psychologist and neuroscientist Dr Ethan Kross explores a deceptively simple idea: emotions are not fixed states we must passively endure, but experiences we can learn to influence with skill, flexibility, and intention.
Even in ‘therapeutic circles,’ emotional wellbeing has often been framed in binary terms: we’re either expressing emotions honestly, or we’re avoiding them. Kross challenges this as an oversimplification. Sometimes staying immersed in an emotional state helps us process it; at other times, remaining in it only deepens rumination and paralysis. The goal is not emotional purity or relentless positivity, but flexibility.
Dr Kross does not argue music should always make us feel "better." In fact, emotionally congruent music can sometimes be more regulating than upbeat music. Many people who feel sad don’t necessarily want to be abruptly “cheered up.” I know the last thing I want when I’m feeling down is Barlow & Co. telling me to ‘let it shine’. Not now, Gary; I’ve only just checked into the Heartbreak Hotel and then I’m off on a solo hike among the Fake Plastic Trees. We may instead want to feel understood, accompanied, or emotionally held. A melancholic song can create resonance and validation before a person is ready to transition elsewhere emotionally.
Kross encourages intentionality. Rather than viewing music as background noise, he suggests paying attention to which songs reliably produce particular emotional effects. Which music grounds you? Which songs energise you? Which albums help you grieve, focus, calm down, or reconnect with yourself? In one example discussed in interviews around the book, he describes using Journey’s, 'Don’t Stop Believin’,' to help shift his daughter’s emotional state before football practice. She gets in the car feeling anxious and reluctant, the song comes on and by the time they pull up at the training ground, she’s bounding out of the car and running over to her friends with a great big smile on her face. The point is not the song itself, but the principle underneath it: emotional states are often more malleable than we assume, and it’s sometimes okay to proactively shift them.
Kross does not argue that music is a substitute for therapy, relationships, or deeper emotional work. Rather, music is one of the most immediate and human tools available, one that most of us already carry in our pockets.
