Can slow-paced instrumental music help you fall asleep? Scientists say you should try your favorite high-energy tunes instead.
Early research suggests that listening to your favorite music, even if it’s loud, energetic, and contains vocals, can make it easier to close your eyes.
Experts believe this is because there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to the type of music people choose to sleep with. In some cases, being familiar with the song can be relaxing.
Kira Vibe Jespersen, assistant professor at the Center for Music in the Brain at Aarhus University in Denmark, told the PA news agency: Sleep despite the music being upbeat and energetic.
“We are currently working to test this hypothesis.”
For this study, Professor Jespersen and her colleagues analyzed over 200,000 tracks from nearly 1,000 sleep-related playlists on Spotify.
The results showed tracks commonly associated with sleep, such as being quieter and slower than other music featured in people’s playlists.
But the team also found that many of the songs on these playlists had more energy than your average sleep music. For example, Dynamite by Korean boy band BTS and Lovely by American songwriters Billie Eilish and Khalid.
Using this data, researchers were able to identify six different subcategories of music that people listen to for sleep.
Professor Jespersen told PA:
“We expected some variation, but not much.”
She said that without sleep data from users, the team can’t be sure whether high-energy music can help induce sleep.
The researchers said their findings, published in the journal Plos One, “inform the clinical use of music and provide insight into how music is used to control human behavior in everyday life.” It is possible to deepen the understanding of
