How Music Communicates Meaning

Music is far more than just sound; it's a complex system of communication that engages our emotions, minds and bodies. It tells stories, sets moods, reflects cultures and even influences our beliefs.[1] Music can even have a significant impact on our mental health.[2] When this is done unconsciously, we often choose music that amplifies our current mood – what’s called the emotional congruency effect – but when used intentionally, music can be a powerful tool for managing our emotions.[3]

Understanding how music communicates requires looking at multiple layers: the lyrics, the sound itself, accompanying visuals (like music videos), and the broader cultural and historical context.

The power of words: Lyrics as story and message

At its most explicit, music communicates through lyrics. Lyrics can be seen as a simplified story, often told in short, rhyming and repeating sentences. Songwriters, when crafting lyrics, may be trying to construct a narrative to make sense of their experiences.[4] The words provide a container for the story, held together by rhythm, often featuring a "hook" – a catchy phrase that summarizes the emotional impact. Through lyrics, artists can express things that might otherwise be inexpressible.[5]

The meaning in lyrics can be direct, conveying messages about a wide variety of topics. For example, corridos, a Mexican music genre, have historically been used to pass on oral histories and tell stories about "all the big social issues"[6]; most recently, artists such as Vivir Quintana have used corridos “to change minds” regarding women imprisoned for killing their abusers.[7]

Listeners, however – particularly in popular music – may not always focus heavily on lyrics, but instead “listen primarily to the beat and the melody – the sound of the record - and make their own sense of songs.”[8] While lyrics can offer a clear meaning, a narrative or poetic imagery, other elements are crucial to how meaning is perceived and internalized.

The language of music: Rhythm, melody, and harmony

Beyond the words, the musical elements themselves carry significant communicative power.

Rhythm, the beat patterns underlying music, can indicate the emotional feel of a song; for instance, a slow rhythm often connotes emotional depth.

• Melody is the sequence of pitches that form the main tune, often the part we sing along to.
• Harmony involves the simultaneous sounding of notes, creating chords, and can vary in complexity, helping to distinguish different styles.
• Riffs and hooks, often melodic or rhythmic patterns, are particularly important in commercially oriented popular music for grabbing a listener's attention.[9]

When these elements are working towards the same goal, synchronizing listeners through features like rhythm, chords and melody, it can creating a "flow state" in which listeners are at the same time fully focused but also unaware of time passing.[10] Conversely, dissonance can occur if the song's mood created by the music (e.g., major chords) contrasts with the lyrical message (e.g., violence).[11]

Particular musical techniques can elicit powerful physiological and emotional responses. The feeling known as "frisson," often described as chills or goosebumps, can be triggered by music from many genres, often when music breaks our expectations – like harmonic, rhythmic or melodic surprises.[12] Other triggers include sudden new instruments or voices, abrupt changes in tempo or rhythm, new harmonies and abrupt modulations, particularly “chord progressions descending the circle of fifths to the tonic.”[13] These musical choices tap directly into our emotional and physical responses. Even sounds below the range of human hearing can have an impact; inaudible low-frequency bass can make people move more on the dancefloor.[14]

Visuals and other sensory modalities: Seeing and feeling the music

In today's media landscape, music is often consumed alongside visuals, most notably in music videos. Music videos combine textual (lyrics), auditory (sounds), and visual information.[15] When lyrics and visuals express the same message,[16] it reinforces the message, but a discordant effect can occur when they express different or contrasting messages.[17] For instance, violent lyrics might be set to a peace-promoting video, or empowering lyrics might be accompanied by sexualized imagery. The consonance or dissonance between music, lyrics and imagery can complicate the understanding of the messages.[18] This is especially true when videos are created not by the artists themselves but by online content creators, who choose music overwhelmingly based on how well the hook or a brief segment plays over their own videos.[19]

Beyond music videos, music is recontextualized in other media like film, television and video games. In horror films, for example, pre-existing, seemingly harmless songs can become terrifying when used in a new, surprising context. This "anempathetic" use of music, where the music doesn't match the on-screen action, can bring the horror "close to home" by using commonplace sounds.[20]

Genre, culture and identity

Music genres provide a framework for understanding and interacting with music. Genres aren’t static; they change regularly, reflecting an audience's expectations and wants at a specific point in time.[21] They’re marked by what Carolyn R. Miller calls "typified rhetorical action"[22] – repeating features that satisfy expectations, which can be musical (like a blues chord progression) or rooted in aesthetics (like fashion) or attitude.[23]

Historically, genre has often been used by the recording industry to segregate and discriminate against marginalized groups, and this remains largely true today: Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road," was removed from the Billboard country chart despite its use of both country and hip-hop elements.[24]

Music also contributes to creating subcultures. Hip-hop, for instance, has a long history intertwined with communal culture, borrowing, sharing and experimenting, particularly through sampling, which involves taking snippets of existing recordings to create new music.[25] Dip hop, a style created by Deaf artists, challenges mainstream notions of music by centering sign language and incorporating visual and haptic elements for musical expression and audience immersion. This demonstrates how subcultures can redefine what music is and how it is experienced.

[1] Carbone, L., & Vandenbosch, L. (2024). A meta-analysis of studies examining the effect of music on beliefs. Communication Research, 51(1), 28-55.

[2] McCrary, J. M., Altenmüller, E., Kretschmer, C., & Scholz, D. S. (2022). Association of music interventions with health-related quality of life: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Network Open, 5(3), e223236-e223236.

[3] Kross, E. (2025) Shift: Managing Your Emotions – So They Don’t Manage You. Crown.

[4] Fivus, R. (2025) Songs and Stories Can Transform Lives. Psychology Today.

[5] Speranza, L., Pulcrano, S., Perrone-Capano, C., Di Porzio, U., & Volpicelli, F. (2022). Music affects functional brain connectivity and is effective in the treatment of neurological disorders. Reviews in the Neurosciences, 33(7), 789-801.

[6] Janetsky, M. (2025) Meet the Mexican soldier trying to revamp a musical genre accused of glorifying cartels. Associated Press.

[7] Janetsky, M., & Pesce F. (2025) A Mexican musician uses a contentious genre to sing of women imprisoned for killing their abusers. Associated Press.

[8] Shuker, R. (2013). Understanding popular music culture. Routledge.

[9] Shuker, R. (2013). Understanding popular music culture. Routledge.

[10] Tan, L., & Sin, H. X. (2021). Flow research in music contexts: A systematic literature review. Musicae scientiae, 25(4), 399-428.

[11] Kolchinsky A., Dhande N., Park K., Ahn Y. Y. (2017). The minor fall, the major lift: Inferring emotional valence of musical chords through lyrics. Royal Society Open Science, 4(11), 170952. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170952

[12] Harrison, L., & Loui, P. (2014). Thrills, chills, frissons, and skin orgasms: toward an integrative model of transcendent psychophysiological experiences in music. Frontiers in psychology, 5, 790.

[13] Gilberg, S. (2023) This 715-song playlist is scientifically verified to give you the chills, thanks to “frisson”. Big Think.

[14] Otis, N. (2022) Low-frequency bass can’t be heard, but it can fire up the dance floor: study. CTV Network.

[15] Carbone, L., & Vandenbosch, L. (2024). A meta-analysis of studies examining the effect of music on beliefs. Communication Research, 51(1), 28-55.

[16] Fikkers K., Piotrowski J., Weeda W., Vossen H., Valkenburg P. (2013). Double dose: High family conflict enhances the effect of media violence exposure on adolescents’ aggression. Societies, 3(3), 280–292. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc3030280

[17] Powell T. E., Boomgaarden H. G., De Swert K., de Vreese C. H. (2019). Framing fast and slow: A dual processing account of multimodal framing effects. Media Psychology, 22(4), 572–600. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2018.1476891

[18] Carbone, L., & Vandenbosch, L. (2024). A meta-analysis of studies examining the effect of music on beliefs. Communication Research, 51(1), 28-55.

[19] Seabrook, J. (2022) So you want to be a TikTok star. The New Yorker.

[20] Boon, H. (2022) How wholesome songs become horrifying through cinema. Little White Lies.

[21] Muchitsch, V. (2023). “Genrefluid” Spotify Playlists and Mediations of Genre and Identity in Music Streaming. IASPM Journal, 13(3), 48-65.

[22] Miller, C. R. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly journal of speech, 70(2), 151-167.

[23] Petrusich, A. (2021) Genre is disappearing. What comes next? The New Yorker.

[24] Petrusich, A. (2021) Genre is disappearing. What comes next? The New Yorker.

[25] Dent, M. (2023) Why nobody got paid for one of the most sampled sounds in hip hop. The Hustle.