Sex & sound

lifestyle

January 1, 1970

This article was published more than 2 years ago.

Est. Reading Time: 4 minutes

[adrotate banner="16"]

[feather_share show="twitter, google_plus, facebook, reddit, tumblr" hide="pinterest, linkedin, mail"]

By: Dawn Braiscak

Everyone knows love is the most common theme in songs, but why? I believe the answer is sex.

From an evolutionary psychology perspective, this makes a lot of sense. In 1872, Darwin proposed that in our evolutionary past, music was used to attract mates. Sexual selection could have been the driving force for the evolution of music: individuals who had the ability to create music made more babies than those who did not have the ability to make music. Luckily for us, something about music perception and production was passed on, allowing for the babies of musical parents to make more babies with musical abilities.

There is an ongoing debate about the extent to which music is an evolutionary adaptation. Your ability to hear is the result of evolution; the ability to identify the location and type of sounds in your environment is an adaptation. The auditory system allows you to hear a low growl, recognize it belongs to a predator, and locate it is approaching you from the left. The ability to understand sounds in your environment is called auditory scene analysis. Pitch and temporal processing likely evolved for auditory scene analysis. In a recent paper, Dr. Trainor, director of McMaster’s Institute for Music and the Mind, suggests that music probably originated as a cultural phenomenon. However, once it was a cultural creation, the benefits conferred emotionally and socially gave music-makers advantages over other groups. Groups who made music together in the environment in which we evolved succeeded more than their non-musical counterparts.

Synchronization with a beat, also known as entrainment, gives rise to social benefits. Several studies conducted here at McMaster, show that moving in synchrony to music helps people get along. This effect is even present in 14 month old infants. Infants show enhanced helping behaviour when they move in synchrony with a partner to music as opposed to asynchronously. Other studies have shown that synchronous movement can lead to enhanced memory of others and even the release of endorphins. Who needs drugs when you can dance? The emotions elicited by music also have the ability to help synchronize the emotions of a group. Music can make a group of people feel joy at a wedding or sorrow at a funeral. Group cohesion would have been vital to survival in the environment in which humans evolved. Groups that were able to work together could have fought off other tribes and defended their young more successfully. The sexual selection hypothesis and the group cohesion hypothesis do not need to be mutually exclusive. Differential reproduction could have also been a pressure leading to the evolution of music.

Music’s relationship with sex has gone beyond that pressured by evolution. The last century alone has seen sex in music transform from Ella and Louis’ on-stage intimacy to crazed fans of the Beatles to sexualized-pop icons like Britney Spears and Beyoncé. Musicians constantly push boundaries and with this have contributed to the modern culture of sex.

Today, sex fuels the music industry. My eyes and ears are constantly being bombarded by sensual, intimate, emotionally charged messages, many of which are hypersexualized. They make you crave it—and we like craving it; without a drive for sex, no animals would exist today. But sometimes, these messages can bad, and not in the naughty way. Sometimes, the craving for sex our music culture creates overshadows the music itself. As a person’s attractiveness increases, their likelihood of success in the music industry increases. I’m not saying that you don’t need talent if you have crazy sex appeal, but I do wonder how many talented people haven’t made it yet because they lack sex appeal.

As a female musician, sex, music, and I have a special relationship. I used to think that I was only compatible with musicians. I used to think the only reason guys liked me was because of my voice. A guy once told me he wished he could fuck my voice. Charming, right? I have fallen head over heels for drummers and guitarists, and crushed on many more. My first time was a one night stand with a guy from a touring band. He had just opened for A Very Good Bad Band so O My Heart I felt pretty accomplished. My seemingly magnetic pull to musicians makes me believe in Darwin’s theory about music and the ability to attract someone to have sex with you. For guys at least.

I don’t know if the same is true for girls. I feel like it is rare that a female musician has fans who throw themselves at her unless she is an obvious sex icon. Gaga is a lady so obviously she has her monsters. Beyoncé is a Queen so obviously she has a BeyHive. But for the average female musician, like me, I think it is rare that fans throw themselves at you. Maybe that is because my performances are not sexualized enough. Nonetheless, sex is a big part of my craft.

A guy once told me he wished he could fuck my voice. Charming, right?

I draw inspiration from sex. Half of my songs are about love. Half of these are about lust, sexy thoughts, and physical intimacy. Playing these songs makes me feel vulnerable. I literally have a song where the refrain is “You make me feel so vulnerable.” OK, maybe it wasn’t originally written for the audience, but it definitely applies to them. In all seriousness, my hope as a performer is to make someone feel understood with my music. Every person experiences a struggle to find love. Whether this is from an evolutionary perspective, as the struggle to find a mate, or from the cultural perspective, as the struggle to belong, it is a shared experience. I hope that I can make people feel — sexy, loved, understood — even if only for a moment.

Beats for the bump & grind

(As selected by The Silhouette staff)