Overview

• High-energy, less acoustic tracks were linked to amusing, exciting and social memories that people retrieved more quickly.
• Lower-energy, acoustic songs tended to evoke calmer, romantic or sad recollections described as more vivid, unique and important.
• The findings come from an online survey of 233 adults yielding over 1,400 musical memories, analyzed with principal components analysis and linear mixed-effects models.
• Self-selected songs produced more specific, positive, arousing and personally meaningful memories than childhood chart excerpts, with familiarity and liking also playing a role.
• The Goldsmiths team published the work in PLOS One and launched memoryrecords.xyz to share consented memories, seek broader participation and inform future clinical applications.