Instant Genius - The psychology of the sea shanty: Why work songs are such earworms

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

2021 has got off to a strange start, with a surprising trend sweeping the internet: sea shanties. This ancient genre of music has exploded in popularity in recent weeks, thanks to people on social media singing them, sharing them and adding their own twists. In fact, they’ve become so popular that Bristol-based shanty band The Longest Johns have entered the top 40 in the UK singles chart. Naturally, we here at BBC Science Focus wanted to know what it was about sea shanties that makes them so catchy. So this week, we spoke to Professor Catherine Loveday of the University of Westminster. She’s a neuropsychologist who specialises in music. Read more about the science of sea shanties Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe to the Science Focus Podcast on these services: Acast, iTunes, Stitcher, RSS, Overcast Read the full transcription of this episode [this will open in a new window] Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast: Could these gloves be the future of music? – Imogen Heap The neuroscience of happiness – Dean Burnett Dr Pete Etchells: Do video games encourage gambling behaviour? Why you can’t multitask (and why that’s a good thing) Phobias, paranoia and PTSD: Why virtual reality therapy is the frontier of mental health treatment How a scientist used viruses to save her husband’s life from a superbug Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough.

Enough to get lost! Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your oceanfront room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises.

It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. It's peak pollination season, and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speed. That's why I chose GoogleFi wireless. My connections stay strong even when the hive is buzzing.

Plus, unlimited plans started $35, a month. Now that's a deal that doesn't stay. Explore GoogleFi wireless plans today. Plus taxes and government fees. GoogleFi wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. Streaming has made music more accessible than ever, but true listening is about more than ease. It's about quality. British audio experts name audio, alongside French acoustic specialist focal, combine handcrafted tradition with cutting-edge innovation and high-end materials, delivering digital precision with analogue warmth. So you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit nameadio.com

to learn more. You're listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team. With the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at sciencefocus.com or look out for us in your app store. Hello and welcome to the Science Focus podcast. I'm Sarah Rigby, online assistant at BBC Science Focus magazine. 2021 has got up to a bit of a strange start with a surprising trend sweeping the internet, sea shanties. This ancient genre of music has exploded in popularity in recent weeks thanks to people on social media singing them, sharing them and adding their own twists. In fact, they've become so popular that Bristol-based shanty band The Longest Johns have entered the top 40 in the UK singles

chart. Naturally, we here at BBC Science Focus wanted to know what it was about sea shanties that makes them so catchy. So today, I'm talking to Professor Catherine Loveday of the University of Westminster. She's a neuropsychologist who specialises in music. So thank you for coming on the podcast today. So just to start, could you just give us a brief overview of what sea shanties are and why people sang them. Sisiantees were sort of working songs really. They're lots of very repetitive and fairly upbeat, uplifting tunes and melodies

that people can very quickly join and sing together and they tend to be very rhythmic so that people can work while they're doing. So the classic one of hey-ho and up she rises getting the sails up. So it's that the melody and the rhythm are designed to kind of match the activities that are going on and also to be quite repeated.

Okay, so people sang them alongside their work, but what was the benefit of a song in that situation as opposed to just counting? Yeah, that's a really interesting question, and I think it's because music has a real capacity to connect us. So it taps into our natural communication system. It makes us feel bonded and connected. But it also kind of lifts us up in the same way that chanting at a football match

or singing in a religious setting or even singing lullabies to children, music enables us to kind of often reach a different emotional state. And it's also been shown that it can really, really help people with learning. So in the same way that we can learn to count, but actually children learn to count better if those numbers are set to music. We just seem to be primed to respond and connect better when there is melody and timbre and rhythm

and all these elements of music added to something. So would you say that the songs helped people bond and therefore work better as a team? Yeah, absolutely. And this is something that's been known historically, If you go back in history, it's been shown. In fact, some people have argued that not just singing but marching together and sort of collective rhythmic activities might even be a sort of part of our evolutionary success.

And that's because they promote togetherness. And the sort of collective participation in something has been shown to promote our shared social identity. And that gives us a sense of togetherness. And it feels like we're all working towards the same goal. and we're working in the same direction. And actually, human beings only exist when they work together. They only survive if they work together. We have survived as a human species

because of working in groups and working in communities and working in societies. And music has been shown to promote that sort of collective action and to make us feel stronger. So I have played in orchestras when I was younger and one thing I would always notice is if the audience, is clapping along, they will always start to speed up and they'll get faster and faster and it's

really annoying. So how do people, how do we in our brains keep rhythm? That's a good question. We know that the area of the brain that's particularly relevant is the cerebellum, which is the sort of bobbly bit of the brain at the back. We also have quite a lot of different areas of the brain that are involved in timing more generally because actually not just timing of music, but timing with everything is utterly crucial. If we can't coordinate our activities, like we can't even eat. So we have to time our mouth to open when we lift our sort of spoon up towards our mouth. And so timing is something that the brain is actually very, very good at. And it does it on many, many different levels. Musically, we know that it particularly taps into the cerebellum.

And we know that that part of the brain is also really important in terms of motivation. and drive. So emotion and motivate all come from the same word. So emotion and motivate is about actually movement. And so the sense of wanting to get up and move and respond to music is really very, very fundamental and driven by this area of the brain that taps into music and emotion and motivation and all of those things together. We also know that it's really, really useful for sport for the same reasons. So people who, for example, use music in sport often are able to perform for longer. They feel like they've had less effort and they can kind of push themselves harder. Right. So that's really interesting. So that sounds like that's sort of why music

can dance are linked to each other. So when you hear something that's really catchy, you just can't help but start to dance to it. Yeah, it's really interesting. If you do this in a a lecture theatre, there are certain types of music. It's really interesting. If you use one type of music, everyone will start sort of bobbing their head backwards and forwards. And you use a different type of music, everyone starts to kind of sway. It's so absolutely inherent that people will respond to particular rhythms and particular types of music in this very, very collective way. And there's also some very interesting research that shows, and I've always been a bit skeptical of this research, if I'm absolutely honest, but it keeps coming out. And I'm

I'm beginning to be convinced by it, that shows that our brains actually are showing synchronized activity, not only when people play together, but even when they are in an audience together watching something. So when you look at EEG activity, if people who are sharing the same musical experience, you see this very synchronized brain activity. So there is something very fundamental going on where people are sort of feeling connected. What features of the music is it that determines whether people like Bob their heads or sway. It's basically to do with the rhythm. So if you have, if you have a sort of, it's quite difficult to describe it, if you have something that is, that kind of goes, do, do,

do, do, do that will make people sway. Yeah. I can see you doing it. And, and, and, and if you have something that's more, you know, it'll, you know, it'll get people. So it's, it's, it's just this very natural sense to react and move along with the. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, the rhythm that we hear. So a swaying rhythm just makes a sway. It's just, it's so brilliant to watch. Okay. So what features of sea shanties are there that make them really good as work songs? I think it's the fact that they, they tend to have these lifting, lilting melodies that go up. So, so, and they tend to match the actual physical action you're doing. So you have kind of and you have these kind of things that kind of mimic what you're actually doing.

And we know from other research that people use music almost as a metaphor for something. So you have sometimes in music have a sense of going home when something resolves, but you also have a sense of tension sometimes when something feels like it hasn't got home. And what you have with sea shanties is something that is kind of almost moving you backwards and forwards. in a very rhythmic sense. So it's taking you away and it's bringing you back and it's taking you away and it's bringing you back. And it does that kind of with this very, very consistent rhythm

but also with sort of melodic lines that tend to go up and down and match the activity that we're doing. And also in terms of a sea shanty, it kind of matches the environment that you're in. Right, yeah. So these sea shanties, they've exploded in popularity this month. really. And it's been very much an online phenomenon, obviously, because we're all at home. Do you think that the reason they've suddenly become popular, do you think that's related to the fact that we're all at home and we're feeling a need to connect to each other?

Yeah, I thought about this a lot when the sort of clapping for carers started. And this was something that you saw actually all over the world, people started to use. music and rhythm to connect to each other. And in the UK we had this clapping, this thing that was happening every week. And I think there was a sense when people were doing that, that they were, that there was just something that was connecting people who, the rest of the time, were just sort of stuck in their houses and suddenly everyone was coming together and doing something together. And I think this is what's happening with the sea shanties. I think people like to engage in collective musical activities and it's been completely impossible.

But with a sea shanty, they are, they're very, very easy to pick up. That maybe wasn't something I mentioned earlier, but because they are very repetitive, they're very easy to pick up. And so very quickly, it becomes something that you can sing along with. And if you're singing along with it,

then you're immediately engaged and you're part of it. And that in itself connects you to, to everyone else that's doing it. So if you can join, but it's a very simple thing, if you can join in with something, then you feel part of it. And a really good analogy is something like laughter.

So if we hear people laughing and we're not part of what's going on, it can make us feel incredibly excluded. But if you're part of the joke and you're part of the laughter, then actually it has the exact opposite effect. And you suddenly feel incredibly connected to the people that you're laughing with.

And I think because C Chanty's are also really, really basic. I mean, in a sense, it's surprising because they're not kind of modern new music, but actually they go right across the generations. It's kind of free of the kind of in-group, out-group thing that so many genres have. It doesn't really define a group. It just defines our collective history in a sense. And so it's something that will reach across all the different, you know,

groups and and make us feel like we're all one big group instead of you like punk, you like rock, you like R&B and you like country. It's suddenly it's something that everyone can sort of relate to. I realise this question that I'm going to ask is something that probably we don't know the answer to just yet. So as you're saying earlier, people get really like sort of physical reactions to all making music together. You know, their brain activity lines up.

But do people or do you think people would have the same effect if it's just virtual, if you're just listening to a song and singing it on your own in a room? Would that have the same effect as being in a room with 100 other people and all singing together? I mean, as you said, I don't think we absolutely know the answer to this. I've been very interested in the difference, for example, in listening to recorded music versus engaging with something live. And I think if you engage with something live, then you, there's more than just listening to something on a, on a sort of audio device of some kind because you see facial expressions and you see people's movements. I think it's quite hard to completely recreate the togetherness that you have of actually being in the same place together.

And I think that that is partly difficult because it's so instantaneous. we are feeding off of people's movements as well as their and their facial expressions and all of those things. And although you'll pick that up a little bit on the video, it's not the same thing. And also, you don't get the full breadth of sound. So if you're particularly using some of the online systems, you're getting quite a broken up version. And we know that you can't really get people absolutely sync together in those ways. So I don't think it does give you quite the same thing. But I think if you're singing along with something, even actually singing along with something in the car, on a, on, you know, on the car stereo, you can sort of actually feel connected to the person that's singing and to the music. So I, I think the answer to it is that yes, it does form a form of connection. And I think it forms quite a unique form of connection, but I don't think it can quite replace being together. I see. Yeah. I've been listening to C shanties a lot over the last few weeks. weeks. I don't know about you. No, it's a whole phenomenon. I didn't really even know about it until

you mentioned it. I'm obviously in a whole different plane. But they are sort of things that have occasionally sort of featured in my life. So they, so yeah, I'm quite pleased that they're making a bit of a comeback. Yeah, I've been really enjoying them actually. And there's one, the one that seems to sort of have started it all is called the Wellermint and that's been going around and around in my head for about a week now. And so what is it about a song that can make it a real earworm? Yeah, this is something that loads of people have tried to sort of find specific things about, and it's actually really hard to pin down. It's really hard to pin down something because what sticks in one person's head doesn't

necessarily stick in another person's head. But the easier it is for us to sort of pick up, Some people have argued that the easier it is for us to even be able to sing in our mind. So if we can articulate it in our head, so if we can kind of almost hum it internally or mouth the words, then we are maybe more likely to remember it better. And we know that, for example, we remember tunes that are sung better than tunes that are played. And it's partly because you can, in your mind, sing it back. So you are kind of almost rehearsing it in practice.

to sing it. I think anything that has an easy melody that people can pick up, and we don't really know what these hooks are, but there are certain hooks that sort of really grab people. And so anything that's where you've got a repeated thing that goes round and round and round, and that's very easy to sort of sing back, and something with a kind of a melodic line that's not difficult to do, so something that doesn't jump about too much, but follows a nice line, those seem to be the things that stick in our mind most. And that's simply, I think, because they're repeated. It's like a mantra almost. So anything that is repeated like a mantra just kind of gets stuck. Right. It's interesting that you said that we remember melodies

better if they're sung rather than played. Because I always find that I find it much easier to remember the melody of a song than the words. I think that's probably quite common. You know, you hear people going like, da da da da da da if they don't quite remember the words. So how does that match up? Oh, well, actually, that's interesting because the research shows that even if you, even if it's law, it still works. It's not actually the words that seem to do it. It's just the ability to, um, so if you hear a violin, you can't recreate that sound. I mean, this is just one theory. There have been different theories about why it might be. Another theory is that it's simply the human voice and that the human voice compels us more. We are more intuitive. and we've evolved to focus on the human voice.

So that's one theory. And the other theory that has been this idea that if you can articulate it and if you hear something that you can mimic, even if it's just la, la, la, then you are more likely to remember it than if it's a violin or a flute that we feel one step removed from. Oh, I see. Thank you.

Okay. So just one last question then. Do you have a favourite sea shanty that you can recommend to our listeners? Well, as I said, I haven't really been listening to them that often, but I'm just going to kind of go back to my childhood as I always do. And it's the drunken sailor. And the reason that always sort of sticks in my mind is because I remember it so well from being a child. And I remember it kind of being sung at school. But then I played in a band when I was, while I was doing my PhD, I played in bands every weekend.

And one of the players would always break into that song halfway through something. And the whole pub would join in. So it sort of became one of our features is that we'd be playing all this kind of rock and roll and then suddenly we'd break out into what should we do with the drunk? Everyone in the pub would start singing. And I think that's why your questions have appealed to me so much because there were all these people sitting around and I didn't, in a million years. think that that's what they'd want to be listening to, but it absolutely worked every time guaranteed.

All right, great. Thank you very much. That was neurosychologist Professor Catherine Lovday talking about the power of sea shanties. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Science Focus podcast. The January issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now. Also in this issue, we explore the greatest mysteries of the universe. Dr Michael Mosley shares his top tips for keeping your blood pressure on track, and as always, our panel of experts answer your questions. Of course, there's much more inside and on sciencefocus.com. Thank you for listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team. With the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at

sciencefocus.com or look out for us in your app store. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analog warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist focal, name creates high-end audio systems, combining innovation with craftsmanship, so you can listen to music, just as the artist intended. Discover more at name audio.com. Relax and let Ralph's delivery handle your grocery shopping this week. We start with only the freshest items, then review your list and carefully choose each one.

Then we pack it all up and deliver it in as little as 30 minutes, so you can feel confident it's what you ordered. Fresh groceries, your way, with Ralph's delivery and pickup. And right now, you can save $20 on your first delivery or pickup order. Ralph's, fresh for everyone.