Many people don’t realise how much their lives are influenced by music and how much it appears. You might be able to think of examples where you chose to consume music, like attending concerts and gigs, or choosing to listen to music in your daily life. But there are lots of other examples that most of us are less aware of, like hearing music at significant life events such has weddings and funerals. This can result in something we call ‘MEAMs’ – Music Evoked Autobiographical Memories (Jakubowski & Ghosh, 2021). Which is where we associate music with particular memories or times in our life. 

There is also the music we hear when we didn’t necessarily chose to engage with it, for example in adverts, shops or tv and film. But music is also used in more obscure ways, such as for pain relief (Lee,  2016).

When we start to look at the world around us, music shows up in all sorts of places and this has been true throughout history. In different ways music has always been a part of community living and connection. There are so many things that music can tell us about ourselves.