“Hello. It’s me.”
By now you’ve surely heard Adele’s hit single “Hello,” either on the radio or in the mall or through the speakers of the UFOs flying low over the Arkansas plains at night. It’s an inescapable part of being alive in 2015.
Adele is back. And her surgically repaired vocal chords are stronger and more vibrant than ever.
“I’m in California dreaming about who we used to be.”
“Hello” is a heart-wrenching ballad that, for me, has the colloquial effect of sending “shivers down my spine.” An every day sensation, this feeling can also be referred to as “striking a nerve,” or simply getting “the chills.” Many of us have experienced it. But as I listened to Adele and felt the thousands of tiny insect feet shinnying down my back in an exotic massage evoked by only the most dramatic measures, I began to wonder what causes this neurological phenomenon.
So I did some research. Turns out that, back in 2008, a musicologist and professor at Ohio State University named David Huron did an extensive study on this very subject. Ultimately, his research led him to coin the term “music-evoked frisson” for the sensation of chills and gooseflesh, according to an article by Arielle Lasky, a writer for the Stanford News Service at Stanford University, where much of the research took place. However, Huron notes that music is not the only thing that produces this feeling, as a similar sensation can be evoked when someone runs fingernails on a chalkboard or pauses at the top of a roller coaster. This begs the question: how can feelings of discomfort and terror be so closely related to feelings of contentment and pleasure?
“Huron theorized that frisson, and other pleasurable feelings like it, are caused by ‘cortical inhibition of the amygdala,’ an area of the brain involved in fright,” Lasky said. “According to Huron, researchers have discovered that several of the frisson’s acoustic correlates — things that seem to induce the sensation in listeners — are fear-related. These correlates include rapidly large increases in the loudness of music, abrupt changes in tempo and rhythm, a broadening of frequencies and an increase in the number of sound sources, among other factors.”
Essentially, Huron’s research led him to believe that when we experience “the chills,” we are actually experiencing a fearful reaction to something unexpected, which then gives way to a pleasurable wash of relief, if you will, as the brain and heart rate relax into their equilibrium states. The instinctual “fight or flight” response subsides, leaving behind only the icy remnants of fear and anticipation.
So there you have it. Our beloved soul-pop singer/songwriter is back, and she is scaring us from the other side with her elicitation of “music-evoked frisson” in our auditory nerves.
Welcome back, Adele. And hello, science. How are you? It’s so typical of me to talk about myself, I’m sorry.
