Something terrible happened to me over the break – something that would end up having a radical impact on my everyday life. Possibly even my worst nightmare: I lost my headphones. And precisely because it seemed like such a big deal at first, it might have been for the better.

After the initial despair, and even anger, came the reflection. I realised I’d grown more and more dependent on them throughout my first term here, as a result of living alone for the first time: nothing was forcing me to strike up a conversation while eating dinner alone in my room, and the few contact hours of my degree left me with whole days to fill with walks from library to library.

Thinking back, I should have realised something was off when I found myself grabbing my headphones for the ten-second commute from my room to the shared kitchen. But why – I wasn’t hurting anyone, was I? So why did it feel terribly wrong?

“Since music had become a strategy for escaping my problems, I was treating it as a means rather than the end itself”

The problem seems to have two layers. First, I was using music to keep my mind busy, as a way of numbing my thoughts. Secondly, since music had become a strategy for escaping my problems, I was treating it as a means rather than an end in itself. Such an act somehow seems a vulgar way to treat art; I wondered if using a song in this purely practical way, instead of appreciating the beauty that lies within it, is to desecrate it.

In other words, this mindless way of listening to music could be seen as both harmful to me and disrespectful to the music. According to Theodor Adorno’s On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening, neither of these things were my fault; the true culprit is the music itself, or rather the world around us, which only seems able to produce music that has this effect on us. At the end of the day, if artists are creating by commission, rather than by vocation, it follows that music is a product and no longer a work of art. This explains why we engage with it as such and go even further than that, overlooking the value or significance of songs and using them as an escape.

So is saying that we listen to music to cope with sadness merely an analogue for covering up the exhaustion of existing in a capitalist world? Adorno would say that light music “inhabits the pockets of silence that develop between people moulded by anxiety, work, and undemanding docility […] it is perceived purely as background.” Definitely couldn’t be me…

“Our hectic train of life would deem the idea of listening to music while doing nothing else alarmingly unproductive”

Although, after all, it’s not unlikely that today’s ever-duller reality generates a need for escapism, as our hectic train of life would deem the idea of listening to music while doing nothing else alarmingly unproductive. In that sense, music seems to have become an extension of doomscrolling – a slightly less extreme version that is compatible with most of our daily activities and ensures that when we are able to break free from it, we never fully escape a numbing brain fog.

There seems to be something a little too easy about this depressing vision of the world. In other words, the fact that my angsty 14-year-old self would agree is definitely a red flag. As convincing as this pessimistic vision might be, it relies on the premise that there is such a thing as “light music”, which is bizarre as it implies a song has a fixed, objective, matter-of-fact value. It seems slightly reductive to factor out the subjective listening experience when assessing the value of a song. The context surrounding this experience is often what brings out its transcendental value.

Even the expression itself is problematic, implying that certain kinds of music are “heavier” than others, as if the artistic value and depth of some songs outweighed that of others. But doesn’t meaning and artistic value lose all of its charm and mystery, arguably their very reason for existing, if we start thinking of them as quantifiable?

“This relatively new way of listening to music in the background while doing other activities has allowed it to literally become our companion”

To challenge this even further, resorting to music as a coping mechanism because we struggle to deal with the dullness of the world around us certainly is a symptom of a strange reality. But that being said, it seems harsh to judge someone for seeking comfort in music in order to escape the negativity of their own thoughts – I can definitely think of worse ways to cope. Besides, isn’t there a certain poetic beauty in the fact that what we resort to in order to survive such a daunting context is, ultimately, art?

I think we would be incredibly daft to consider all of today’s music merely “doomlistening”, as Adorno suggests, when there seems to lie such a profound healing power within it. Perhaps this relatively new way of listening to music in the background while doing other activities has allowed it to literally become our companion. Perhaps that is an even more beautiful way to engage with it. By relying on music in times of need, it is as if we’ve become friends with our comfort songs. So, let’s not burn our headphones so soon. Despite the admittedly dystopic setting, there’s something inherently fascinating about what they’ve allowed us to do: to engage with art so deeply that we are able to call it a friend with whom we can wile away our day.

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