The comfort zone
Why we like to stick to the same songs instead of trying something new (and what this means for creativity)
I don’t know about you, but I have songs I keep coming back to, over and over again.
I know exactly how they’re going to sound and how they’re going to make me feel. I guess they’re the equivalent of pulling on a favourite cardigan. I know exactly what I’m getting and that’s exactly what I think I want in that moment. I’m right in my comfort zone.
But there’s more to it than that.
Those songs from our, shall we say, formative years aren’t just melodies. They’re actually mini time machines that transport us back to who we were when we were listening to them the first time round.
They’re a little bit of magic that can even have you remembering exactly what you were doing, who you were with, how you were feeling.
For example, I just know that if I listen to Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, I’ll be transported back to the living room of where I was living at the time, lying on the floor with my eyes shut and feeling just a little bit heartbroken.
You might be thinking it seems a little bit crazy to make myself go through that again (and again) but it’s become such a beautiful, nostalgic, and bittersweet feeling. And it’s a feeling I’ve come to treasure, and one I know I can make happen by listening to the song.
The comfort of the familiar
Our brains process familiar music differently to something we’re hearing for the first time. It requires less cognitive effort and it delivers an immediate emotional reward (thanks, Tracy!).
Last week I talked about how it can be hard to get started listening to a whole new genre of music. But even opening up your current playlist to some new songs can feel like a bit of a challenge.
Our musical tastes tend to solidify and it’s easy and comforting to return again and again to the soundtrack of our teens and twenties.
But it turns out that, the older we get, the more difficult it can be for our brains to as easily distinguish between different sounds, so that new music can start to sound a bit same-ish.
The creative benefit of seeking out new sounds
I’m as guilty of listening to the same things over and over as the next person, but I’ve been thinking about what it might mean if we do allow ourselves to become more open to new music, even within the genres we prefer.
Because what if our musical comfort zone isn’t just affecting our listening habits but also reinforcing broader creative patterns, our receptiveness to novelty and uncertainty?
The same part of us that says, ‘I don’t want to listen to that’, might be surprisingly close to the part that thinks, ‘That’s not really my thing’ or ‘I could never do that’ when faced with new creative possibilities.
Our brains are pattern-making machines. They love efficiency, categorisation, and prediction. But creativity thrives on the opposite, on connections between things that don’t necessarily seem to go together and on unexpected detours.
But maybe the answer is just to make small changes every now and then. Give a new song a chance at least all the way through once or twice, order something different at your favourite restaurant once in a while, and don’t let the Netflix algorithm choose your next movie.
I’m not going to stop listening to the songs I love and know so well. They’re as much a part of my life as the books I love and return to often, and the movies for which I can recite chunks of dialogue.
But I’ll try to give something different a chance every now and then, too.
Promise.
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