It’s much more than that bass! People say that music is a universal language and guess what, that’s true. After all, there’s hardly any person who doesn’t love to tap to a great tune. Irrespective of the genre, everybody loves music. But have you ever wondered what it is about music that makes it so compelling universally?
Is it because music possesses the power to evoke multiple emotions in us or is it because we all can remember at least one song that’s special to us? Think about it. There are multiple times in our lives when we look up to music to find our solace. Be it a painful breakup or when your crush proposes to you, your school graduation maybe, or a song that puts you to sleep. There’s a song for every occasion.
But how often did we wonder about the reason behind it? Perhaps, not till today. Well, there’s a scientific explanation for all of it. This is considered to be a human tendency which we often overlook. Some experts at the American Music Therapy Association believe that humans hold a deep connection to music because people are hardwired to react to music. The various elements of music that include melody, rhythms, dynamics, and harmony are etched in a person’s functioning, physiology, and overall being.
Given human’s deep emotional attachment to music, it only makes sense when the experts decided to research it. However, the exact mechanisms and dynamics behind this remain unknown, but researchers’ state that music causes to release of opioids, the body’s natural pain reliever in the brain that reflects on the mood.
Did all of these facts fascinate you? Well, if it did, then you would be elated to know there’s more to this. If music has saved your day multiple times and has become an integral part of your daily life, keep reading to discover some unknown facts about music that you bet you didn’t know.
12 unknown music facts that are sure to leave you spellbound!
#1. Fender Could Not Play the Guitar
To start the list, the inventor of the most famous guitar could play the guitar himself. Fender Stratocaster, who invented the electric guitar couldn’t play guitar. The founder holds his real talent in crafts. Fender started his work at a radio repair service that used to repair various types of electronics including home audio amplifiers, radios, phonographs, and much more.
Back in the early 1940s, Fender started to manufacture various types of instruments, and later on, he went on to release the first-ever mass-produced electric guitar, the 1950 Telecaster.
#2. Your Heartbeat Syncs to the Rhythm of the Music
Music boosts heart health. Several studies suggest that compared to silence, music increases heart rate and speeds up your breathing. So, the faster the music, the heart rate increases and so does the breathing pace. Music has been known to be linked with the unconscious responses produced by the body that also includes the cardiovascular system.
Not only does music sync with the cardiac rhythms but different types of music have different types that affect the heart rate in different ways. It could be the emotion attached to a specific song that causes this amazing thing!
#3. Underwater Concert
UK’s Underwater Concert has created a lot of waves. The venue for the concert is a swimming pool and the audience listens to the music under the water. Sounds impossible? But that is exactly what happens.
In 2006, on October 10, British singer Katie Malua was the first and only record holder in the world for performing a concert 303 meters underwater. Katie along with her band performed on Statoil’s Troll off the coast of Bergen, Norway. The singer performed two, 3ominutes concerts to an audience of oilrig workers. The oilrig workers are the ones who won the ticket to the spectacular performance.
#4. The Queen
The Queen, the British rock band which was formed back in 1970 in London received a commemorative. The four members of The Queen appeared on the British Euro5 coin that was issued in January 2020. Having accomplished a lot of achievements, the rock band made its way into the world of rock years ago.
One specific album by The Queen named News of the World attained world popularity for some of its most renowned songs that include We will rock you and We Are the Champions, which became the anthems of many sporting events around the globe. The total record sale of The Queen is unimaginable because of which they are one of the best-selling artists in the world.
#5. Queen-Bohemian Rhapsody
Ever heard of Queen-Bohemian Rhapsody? Well, The Queen’s famous song Bohemian Rhapsody is the most-streamed song from the 20th century. It also overtook Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. Back in 1975, the song reached the Number 1 spot in the UK and had also hit the Number 1 spot yet another time in 1991 followed by the death of the Queen’s lead vocalist.
Over the decades, the song’s popularity has only kept increasing. Following the release of Bohemian Rhapsody, the song has made over $600 million at the box office and has been streamed over 1.6 billion times across the various music streaming services.
#6.Eminem’s Rap God
Eminem’s Rap God song has met acclaim from multiple music critics and why not! The song holds the records for having the maximum number of words in a song. The song ‘Rap God’ contains an unbelievable count of 1560 words that have been delivered at an average of 4.28 words per second. ‘Rap God’ was originally released from his album The Marshal Matters back in the year 2013.
#7. 35000-year-old Bone Flute
Discovered in a European cave, a 35000-year-old vulture bone flute is most likely the world’s oldest musical instrument. In 2008, the pieces were found in a Stone Age cave in the southern part of Germany. The flute is said to be designed with five finger holes and a V-shaped mouthpiece.
The oldest flute was made from the natural hallow wing of a vulture and the various discoveries have stated that music was a part of people’s life even back then. So far, it has been one of the most significant cultural accomplishments that offered an advantage over the present existing generation.
#8. The World’s Oldest Song
The Hurrian Hymn No.6 is recorded to be the world’s oldest song that was sung about approximately 3400 years ago, making it the oldest song to be sung in the history of the world. The song is considered to be the rhyme of an ancient Goddess Nikkai and was produced around the 14th century in cuneiform by the Hurrians.
Discovers have stated that the song was found in the clay tablets and was excavated around the years of 1950s from Ugarit, the city of the ruins in Syria.
The Hurrian Hymn No.6 is also considered to be one of the oldest melodies of the world and is also known as the oldest musical composition to have survived its originality and integrity over the centuries as the first-century tune, referred to as Seikilos Epitaph. It also contained a short set of lyrics!
#9. Musicians have a shorter life span
A study conducted by the University of Sydney professor named ‘Stairway to H*II: Life and Death in the Pop Music Industry has evaluated the deaths of the artists that took place between 1950 and June 2014, and the results were shocking!
The study examined the longevity and the proportion of homicides, suicide, and accidental deaths amongst the musicians. The factor of longevity was evaluated by calculating the average age of death for each artist by the decade of their death and their sex. The resulting average was then compared with the averages by the sex and the decade for the general U.S. population and the results stated that a musician’s life span is 25 years shorter.
#10. Group singing boosts mood
Multiple studies are being conducted that prove that singing as a part of a big group offers numerous emotional and physical benefits. Moreover, the researchers have also discovered that singing soothes the soul and indeed does raise a person’s mood and spirit. When a person sings with a group, the body releases multiple feel-good hormones like oxytocin that further reduces the stress-causing hormones like cortisol.
#11. Some people have No Feelings towards music
Now, this could also be the case for some individuals. As per the results of a study conducted at the University of Barcelona, 5% of the participants did not feel any sort of emotion when they were made to hear music. No chills or no mood to tap their feet, whatsoever. Before you start reacting to such subjects, understand that this is perfectly normal. Those persons received pleasures from other things like sex, food, and other activities.
#12. Wanna Be is the catchiest song
A group of researchers from The Museum of Science and Industry in England conducted a study in 2014 and released an online test named Hooked on Music. It comprised of one thousand quips from the pop hits and went back to the 1940s. The study asked over 12000 participants to identify the songs as fast as they could.
The results concluded that ‘Wanna Be’ by The Spice Girls was the catchiest song that people were being able to recognize in about 2.3 seconds! This was way below the 5-second average of identifying the other played popular tracks.
So, all these data prove that music has played a pivotal role in people’s lives and that everyone has one purpose or the other for music.