“Great music is ‘as good as sex'”: Err, no, no it isn’t
THE Telegraph gives us this headline:
Great music is ‘as good as sex’
And illustrates it with a picture of a bird in her pajamas grinning at us under her headphones. Subtle, eh?
Unfortunately, the rest of the piece goes on to show that actually great music, or even dirty music or bad music, is not as good as sex.
What’s actually happening is that the same part of the brain lights up when listening to music we’re interested in as the part of the brain that lights up when we’re having sex (good sex, dirty sex or bad sex). Which is really a very different thing.
For there’s all sorts of things that light up that part of the brain: eating for example and, no doubt, having a really good shit (no, really). It is true that I had, briefly fortunately, a girlfriend who thought that chocolate was better than sex and Mark Oaten comes to mind as well but no, we do not say these things are as good as sex more generally.
What’s actually happening is simply that music tickles this same fancy. Which is why we like music of course. In much the same manner that we tend to like opiates. They mimic the actions of the body’s own drugs, endorphins. They light up that same part of the brain that is, the two different drugs.
The actual lesson to take from this finding is that given music tickles the same parts of the brain as sex does, listening to music can actually lead to sex. Get the bit tickled and it might lead to something more, see?
But then anyone who’s ever been to a gig knows this, as of course does anyone who has ever played in a band.
Posted: 15th, April 2013 | In: Music Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
