Sad boys represent.

It’s hardly news that here at FACT we’re a bit fond of sad music, whether it’s Steve Roach’s melancholy ambience or David Lynch’s smokey blues. Handily then, Scientists at the Tokyo University of the Arts and the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have discovered that listening to characteristically sad, minor key music can actually bring out a contradictory range of emotions.

44 volunteers were played a selection of minor key and major key pieces of music, and were asked to comment on their emotional state as each piece developed, and the scientists discovered that the minor key music was bringing out a “romantic emotion”. The team’s leader Ai Kawakami elaborated on this, stating  “Music that is perceived as sad actually induces romantic emotion as well as sad emotion. And people, regardless of their musical training, experience this ambivalent emotion to listen to the sad music.”

He clarified by explaining that it is art’s dislocation from actual sadness that accentuates its positivity “Emotion experienced by music has no direct danger or harm unlike the emotion experienced in everyday life. Therefore, we can even enjoy unpleasant emotion such as sadness. If we suffer from unpleasant emotion evoked through daily life, sad music might be helpful to alleviate negative emotion.”

It’s an interesting idea for sure, and definitely worth another spin of self-confessed sad boy Yung Lean’s Unknown Death 2002 just to be certain, we’d say. [via NME]