You Are Reading the First 6 FREE Chapters (470 pages)
Why People Listen to Music—Especially Love Songs
People listen to music because it activates certain emotional states. Today, in humans, the most common theme of songs is romantic love. Geoffrey Miller, a champion of Darwin’s sexual selection theory as the primary driver of the evolution of music in humans, notes that:
As a tool for activating specific conceptual thoughts in other people’s heads, music is very bad and language is very good. As a tool for activating certain emotional states, however, music is much better than language. Combining the two in lyrical music such as love songs is best of all as a courtship display.
As the reason to create love songs declines, musical productivity in males drops off significantly after marriage.
Only about 3% of mammals are monogamous (compared with 90% of birds). In mammal species that are monogamous, empirical evidence indicates that vocal duetting serves to strengthen pair-bonds. Female gibbons, for example, produce “great calls,” to which male gibbons then respond. Male and female bonobos also sing, and are monogamous.
Moreover, the various monogamous primate species that duet are not closely related biologically, which means duetting and monogamy evolved several times, independently (convergence). This indicates that male-female duetting and monogamy go hand and hand. Isn’t that sweet? If you want to keep your spouse around, all you have to do is duet with him or her. Like Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. Or Tammy Wynette and George Jones (oops!).