Why Does Winter Make Me Emo?
On a frosty, overcast morning in early November, I walked outside my dorm, put my earbuds in, and scrolled till I found that one depressing-as-shit-sad-girl-hours playlist. Phoebe Bridgers, Daniel Caesar, Mk.Gee, Jake Minch, Theo Kandel, you name it. The perfectly curated playlist guaranteed to make someone ask if you are in therapy. “Ahh—We have made it. It’s that time of year.”
This got me wondering—why do we associate winter with “cozy, sad, emo” music? Why does cold weather make us crave songs that sound like we’re in the existentialist, mid-life crisis part of a movie? The question encouraged me to think about how seasonal trends influence the way we listen to music. This led me to something that I’d always heard about but never really looked into: Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and how it connects to our listening habits.
An estimated 10 million people experience SAD each year, entering what researchers refer to as “hibernation.” As winter approaches, the days become significantly colder and darker earlier. Less daylight can cause a drop in serotonin—the neurotransmitter that regulates mood, causing an increase in the mood disorder along with fatigue, lethargy, and sadness. Additionally, the hormone melatonin, released before we sleep, is triggered by darkness. With the shorter hours of sun in the winter, our bodies shift their autonomic response to fewer daylight hours, leaving us feeling sleepy much earlier, leading to our saddened mood. All this helps explain why SAD is most common during winter months. These biological changes naturally move your emotional baseline lower, taking your music preferences with it.
But why wouldn’t we want to listen to happier beats in order to get out of that gloomy feeling? Though the evidence is not conclusive, somber music has been shown to release prolactin, a hormone that provides a feeling of comfort and catharsis. The release of this hormone might help explain the classic “good cry” effect when a song hits deep. It’s believed that listening to sad music can actually be comforting—helping people feel less alone and providing a way to process emotions through lyrics and melodies that resonate with their mood. SAD appears to be associated with these changes in music preferences as people search for music that matches their low mood, especially in the colder months—hence my strange excitement to turn on my depressing-as-shit playlist.
A study conducted by Dr. Liila Taruffi and Dr. Stefan Koelsch took on this same idea: Why do people seek and appreciate sadness in music? Taruffi and Koelsch surveyed 772 people across the world, finding that music-evoked emotions seem to be strongly influenced by the purpose that music serves in a given situation. Participants were asked a series of questions where they were asked to provide examples of circumstances in which they listen to sad music, and to describe the function that the music serves in those situations. The analysis revealed that listeners overall reported to engage with sad music when experiencing emotional distress, and that the sad music adequately serves as a mood enhancement, allowing the participant to vent, reflect, and console themselves on their current mood. The results show that when listening to sad music, it has pleasurable effects on our imaginative processes, indicating that we can actually make the sadness feel good. This makes sense as there is an additional understanding that nostalgia is a frequent emotion evoked by sad music—adding to this mood-congruent theory where individuals choose music that validates and regulates their current emotional state.
In another study conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford, a link between weather conditions and music preferences was found, demonstrating the same hypothesis. After analysing over 23,000 chart-topping songs over the past 70 years, the study concluded that more upbeat, positive-emotion tunes were positively associated with warmer temperatures. During winter, they found, people tend to prefer music with lower energy, and more bittersweet, negative emotions. The music industry is certainly aware of this link, as artists tend to release more upbeat “summer vibe” music as the weather starts getting warmer for the summer.
Sad music provides a sense of empathy, imagination, and emotional regulation that we may subconsciously be looking for on these gloomier days. The lower-mood songs help us manage our emotions without the possible pressure of forcing cheerfulness. As humans, we are wired to be emotionally affected by music, and with the mood-congruent theory, it becomes clear that we choose music that validates and regulates our emotions.
It seems that our mind clearly meets us where we are in the moment, and the music we desire listening to is our body’s natural response to help us make sense of it! So if winter turns you emo too, don’t overthink it. It’s just biology and psychology with a side of Lizzy McAlpine, doing its job.