Why music, especially old music, can tap into our deepest, most meaningful life memories

Dylan Sinclair's musical education started early, in a gold Nissan Murano. Sinclair, a Juno-nominated artist in Toronto, can still remember driving around with his father, listening to R&B cuts. It was Kevin Sinclair's favourite kind of music. Dylan learned to love it too.

One song stands out: Excuse Me, Miss by Chris Brown. Dylan was a little tyke: four, maybe five years old.

"I remember my dad was running his album, like, all the time, whenever we would go in the car," Sinclair recalled. "And this song, it was very fun. I don't know, like, as a kid, I was able to connect with it. And to this day, it's still like one of my favourite songs."

Whenever Sinclair hears that song, he's a little boy again, sitting in the backseat of the Murano.

"And he's got it on repeat. That, Mariah Carey, just R&B," Sinclair said, giggling.

Many of us are familiar with a song evoking a certain memory: a song comes on at a party or on the radio, and instantly, we're transported to another chapter of our lives, to a time or moment when that song weaved its way into our lives.

The connection is one of the reasons why music — especially old music — is so meaningful to people. It's also why music became such an important coping strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic, in part to connect us with people we could not be with during lockdowns, physical distancing, and travel restrictions.

"Music is a really good way of bringing us back to those sort of previous pre-COVID times when we were actually able to get together with friends and family a bit more," said Kelly Jakubowski, a musical memory researcher at Durham University in England.

"A lot of our memories related to music involve other people, and that's been shown even more so than certain other cues. So I think, in this time we've had this absence from social contact, music can really bring back these memories of loved ones particularly well."

Since the start of the pandemic, we've seen a huge uptick in the popularity of older music on streaming platforms. According to MRC, a music sales data provider, old songs made up 70 per cent of the American music market in 2021. That's an increase from 65 per cent in 2020.

Granted, only songs released in the past 18 months count as new music. But that thirst for vintage tunes is also evident elsewhere, including in film and TV soundtracks. 

Stranger Things sent British singer Kate Bush back to the top of the charts with Running Up that Hill, a song she released in 1985. The new Top Gun movie tripled the streams of Heaven in Your Eyes, the Canadian rock band Loverboy's multi-platinum hit from 1986.

Even the 2021 Super Bowl halftime show was a feast of nostalgia rap, including artists Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent and Eminem.

Going further back to the first pandemic lockdown period in April 2020, Spotify reported a 54 per cent increase in listeners making "nostalgic-themed playlists," along with an increased share of listening to music from the 1950s, '60s, '70s and '80s.