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Nights that are too short, repeated insomnia, daytime sleepiness… Millions of people around the world suffer from sleep disorders. Several options are available to them to sleep better. Listening to K-pop is one of them, according to a recent European study.
K-Pop, a very popular choice for falling asleep
The journal PLOS One recently published the findings of a danish study who looked at the effects of music on falling asleep. It shows that many musical styles can improve the quality of sleep in humans, while helping to calm brain activity.
To reach this conclusion, researchers from the University of Aarhus analyzed nearly 1,000 Spotify playlists around sleep, including 130,150 different songs. Among them are many acoustic instrumental pieces, slow and calm, but also much more rhythmic titles. Scientists say a catchy song can make it easier for some people to fall asleep if it’s familiar to them. This is because repeated listening allows the brain to anticipate what’s next, which produces an effect similar to that of a slower song without much rhythmic variation.
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Listening to music for better quality sleep?
While polls say music lovers favor classical music for deep, restorative sleep, the Aarhus University research team found that K-pop is also a popular choice. And more particularly “Dynamite” by the boy band phenomenon BTS. This track appears in 245 scanned playlists, making it the most popular song for Spotify users to fall asleep to. “Lovely” by Billie Eilish and Khalid, “Lullaby” by Brahms, “Sonata au Clair de lune” by Beethoven, “Clair de lune” by Debussy and the nursery rhyme “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” are also among the favorite titles to enjoy. fall asleep
However, researchers can’t say for sure if the above songs improve sleep quality or actually help listeners fall asleep faster. “The motivation of the listener could have a great influence on the type of music they choose to listen to before bed. Future research should examine the extent to which the different reasons for using music as an aid to falling asleep can influence the choice of a particular piece”they write in their study.
These works remain far from determining the exact role of music in falling asleep. Scientists from Baylor University claim in a studypublished in 2021 in the journal Psychological Science, that familiar, repetitive music can trigger “involuntary musical imagery” that degrades sleep quality, even if it sounds relaxing. So the mystery remains.