What Makes Music Sexy?
UTSC students discuss the sexiest songs of our generation, and the essential ingredients that make rhythm and rhyme so emotional and sensual.
Groovy, sensual, rhythmic and vibey– Music has a unique ability to make us feel things.
“[It] kind of reminds me of my heart pounding in my chest when I am close to someone I like,” says the UTSC student.
Music is an essential part of our lives and culture. Listening to music can sometimes be a passive experience, but can also be highly intensional. Music can be moving,a way to communicate emotions in a way that words or images cannot reach. The songs that we listen to can even become a part of our identity and shape the way we think, feel, and influence the types of culture, media, and aesthetics we find ourselves gravitating to.
“Music makes you feel things you may have never felt before, but also helps express emotions you might not be able to articulate into words, speech, or image.” says UTSC alumni and independent producer, Daniel.
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Music is a way for us to communicate feelings and evokes emotional responses. Music is not only sound but is an aura or quality that adds an air of interest and complexity into our lives, that is sometimes needed to make each day a little better and a little more meaningful or special. It can almost feel fantastical or mystical when you really get into the listening experience, transcendent almost of experience around you.
“I’d say it all comes down to interpretation,” Daniel adds. Music allows artists and listeners alike to connect in a way that is unique to each individual who experiences music and its significance to them differently.
He believes there are many factors that contribute to how music is conveyed and interpreted in song, and requires a level of effort and intention from both the artist and listener. The way music notes are carefully crafted and strung together in a specific sequence, using specific instruments, along the lyrics and singing style are choices made by the music artists. Additionally, how the listener is feeling while listening to the song, along with the context of the physical environment, creates the perfect combination for interpreting a song to have a specific message and emotional attachment. So the way we interpret music is a merger of the experience shared between the two, creating a deeply intimate experience.
It is fascinating how music is able to shape our reactions and behaviours both emotionally and physiologically through the biological process of vocal articulation. The combinations of poetry, melody, instruments, and vocal styling can make us feel such deep and complex emotions. The way we as a society give weight to music as a significant cultural feature also makes it a way for us to feel connected to each other and share a special experience with someone else. Through music we can communicate and express love to others by sharing the experience of listening to music with someone else, or through actions like making a curated Spotify playlist someone you love.
A world without music would feel almost incomplete, still, or lifeless. Music creates an atmosphere, and is a way to feel grounded, feel understood, nostalgic, melancholic. It can boost your mood or a function as a way to cope through hard times. Songs not only provide entertainment but can be a helpful tool and outlet, “[it] can encourage me to get through the tough parts of life,” says another student, relating to the way hip-hop music inspires and motivates him.
Our innate ability to use our voices to sing is enough evidence that humans have a special connection to music. The origins of language that we use to express ourselves and our emotions is still unclear to scientists today. But Charles Darwin had theorized that singing might have been used by early human civilizations, even before the invention of language, as a way to communicate with one another. How humans learned to sing also remains unknown, but theorists have hypothesized that humans might have adopted this skill through imitating nature.
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But I still wonder how a specific set of music notes and sounds strung together in a certain way makes us feel something more than “this sounds nice,” or “that tune is really catchy!” And how certain music can instead make us feel a unique experience that is often hard to describe or simply put into words.
The type of intimacy, sensuality, and sexiness that music can convey or make us feel is one those deep emotions that become challenging to unfold and uncover why and how music can make us feel that way?
“Music and music during sex is about creating an atmosphere and setting a vibe,” says Daniel.
Many students agreed that “sexiness” of sound is not limited to one genre, as the listening experience and the ways we connect and relate to music is entirely subjective and personal.
“I think two people can make love to a metal song and be really into it,” another student argues.
He believes that his favourite genre, hip-hop, conveys a level of intensity that can “inspire listeners to accomplish, and strive for greatness,” and describes the music style as “stimulating, motivational, and badass.”
He also believes that the way we respond to music is mostly based on the artist's intentions when creating a song, where using certain lyrics and melodies, the artist conveys any desired emotional response in the listener, such as through the sexual themes and lyrics in hip-hop songs.
Other students agree that artists hold a great power in constructing how we feel towards their music. And further add that artists don’t necessarily need to produce “sex music,” but playing with different melodies and lyrics can construct specific atmospheres and ambiences that become appropriate for specific physical settings. The student described how for her, certain pop songs can have a “slow, deep, sexy” vibe. “Whenever I listen to [it], I can daydream as a hopeless romantic,” she says.
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She attributes the music experience through associations to the physical experience of attraction. She describes the “tension and hurry” that makes music feel sensual, and reminds her of the physical experience of having a crush on someone. “The fast beat kind of reminds me of my heart pounding in my chest when I am close to someone I like,” she says. The ways in which music is produced with punchy, fast and rhythmic beats could be an intensional mimicry of the human heart that makes us feel so much.
However, some students find other words better descriptors of their favorite genres of music. A biochemistry and media student believes that although her favorite genre R&B can be sexy, she would describe the rhythm, and lyrical choice, and lyrical style as “sticky.”
Presenting the abstract definition of her listening experience, she elaborated that R&B is music that “pushes and pulls”, conveying an experience and sensation opposite to the feeling of silky and smooth. “It makes me feel like I’m ‘in my feels’” she says.
Linked below is a Spotify playlist composed of the students top sexiest songs from their favorite music genres:
Photo by: Rhea Johar // THE UNDERGROUND
“Music is magical.” concludes one student. The illustrative, symbolic, associative and indeterminate nature of the sexiness of music demonstrates how the experience of listening to music is highly involved and unique to each person. The obscurity and mistiness around music and the listening experience suggests that music means more to the people than sounds for entertainment. Music is shapeless and an experience that constructs value and meaning that makes it special and intimate, and possibly something to share with another in an intimate setting, or as an intimate experience.
