Why Are We Attracted to Sad Music?

Sadness at choral performance
Most respondents reported a pleasant and positive experience of sadness, of both high and low arousal. The sadness experienced depended, to a large extend, on the mechanism that appeared to have been involved in their emotional response. Respondents were likely to rate their experience of sadness of having been of negative, low -arousal type, such as depression of feeling downhearted, when the music triggered personal memories or thoughts. Or if the respondent was already in a low mood prior to the concert. High-arousal negative emotions such as grief and anguish were related to the triggering of visual images by the music, whereas positive high-arousal experiences of sadness of sadness that included elation and being uplifted were related to an appreciation of the musical features themselves. These results tend to indicate that it is more than the music itself that influences one’s emotional response to the music.

Sad  vs. happy song
Sad song nominations included genrer such as rock, classical, folk, electronic, jazz, and pop. Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” was among the most frequently nominated songs, along with “Danny Boy”, Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah”, and Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven”. There was no significant differences in tempo (beats per minute) between the sad and happy songs. Both the sad and happy song nominations contained roughly equal numbers of slow and fast music. Even more surprising was the finding that both the ‘happy’ and ‘sad song nominations were predominantly in major keys, and that the ‘happy song category contained just as many songs in a minor key as the ‘sad song’ nominations. Some songs, such as Eva Cassidy’s version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, even appeared.

Song and lyrics 
The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software that was used showed is that the happy song category contained significantly more words in the present tense than the sad song group, suggesting that these songs tended to focus on the here and now rather than on the past or the worries about the future. It also contained more words expressing positive emotions such as “OK”, “yes” or “agree”), while the sad songs contained significantly more words expressing negative emotions, particularly anger and sadness.