Good and bad songs for sleeping, according to science in 2023
Some people prefer total silence for a good night’s sleep. Others like some white noise. And music is the answer for many. Yet while some experts sing the praises of music as a sleep aid, the science is not yet in total harmony.
“Music has a solid evidence base as one of the better-researched non-pharmacological sleep aids that can improve an individual’s sleep, both in terms of insomnia and the quality of sleep,” says Thomas Dickson, PhD, a music psychology researcher at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
The Science
A 2021 study reviewing five separate clinical trials supports that view, finding that music before bedtime significantly improved sleep quality in people 60 and older. But a separate, compelling experiment, which we’ll get to below, suggests some types of music at bedtime can have the opposite effect.
When music does improve sleep, it’s thought to be due to its relaxing effect, reducing stress and anxiety by slowing the heart rate and breathing rate and lowering blood pressure — all of which, according to other research, is known to help you fall asleep faster and enjoy more efficient, effective, restorative sleep.
What’s on your sleep playlist?
What types of music will work best for you is open to experimentation. In general, calm songs with smooth melodies tend to be more helpful than faster, louder, more rhythmic music, the 2021 study found.
In other research, Dickson and a colleague took a more subjective approach to the question, asking people about the music that they think helps them fall asleep.
“The music had quite a dark mix, it was legato, and was not complex or strong in rhythmic activity,” Dickson said. In the legato style, notes flow together smoothly, as in a Mozart piano concerto or the stuff of massage or elevator music.
However, a new study, published today in the journal PLOS One, took yet a different approach, analysing the characteristics of songs on 985 global Spotify playlists associated with sleep. The choices vary widely, explains study team member Kira Jespersen, PhD, an assistant professor in the Centre for Music in the Brain at Denmark’s Aarhus University.
Spotify sleep playlists include plenty of the expected ambient music — mellow and often without lyrics — but also louder stuff, including pop songs such as Dynamite, by BTS and lovely, by Billie Eilish and Khalid.
The most common genres of tracks on sleep playlists, as classified by Spotify, were, in order: sleep, pop, ambient, lo-fi. That contrasts notably with the results of a 2018 online UK survey that put classical music at the top of people’s preference list, followed by rock, pop, acoustic and jazz. An Australian survey found the order of genre preference to be classical, pop, ambient, folk and then alternative.
“The incongruence of findings could be because both previous studies were based in one single country with a limited number of participants whereas this current study used a global approach,” Jespersen and her colleagues write.
None of these three studies investigated which music types actually work-best, but Jespersen has looked into that question in previous research.
“Sleep music in general is softer, slower, instrumental and more often played on acoustic instruments than other music,” Jespersen told me. “When looking at basic research on music and physiological arousal, we see that especially tempo is an important factor, so if you want to promote sleep through increased physical relaxation, then you should choose slow music.”
Watch out for songs that get stuck in your head
Not all sleep-music research is upbeat. Listening to too much music, or playing catchy tunes just before bedtime, can disrupt sleep. In one experiment, scientists had 50 unfortunate folks in a sleep lab listen to three pop songs right before they went to bed:
● Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off
● Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe
● Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’
Half heard the originals, and half listened to instrumental versions. They were all asked if they experienced any earworms — when a tune gets stuck in your head and plays over and over — and their brain activity, heart rate and other sleep indicators were monitored through the night. The people who listened to more music were more likely to report earworms, and they were more apt to struggle falling asleep, woke more during the night, and spent less time in the critical phases of deep sleep, the scientists reported in the journal Psychological Science.
The findings ran counter to what the study participants thought about the effects of music on their sleep.
“Almost everyone thought music improves their sleep, but we found those who listened to more music slept worse,” said Michael Scullin, PhD, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University. “What was really surprising was that instrumental music led to worse sleep quality — instrumental music leads to about twice as many earworms.”
Because the study involved only catchy pop tunes, the findings may not apply to other instrumental melodies.
A final note
Good sleep — the deep sleep that repairs the body and mind and prepares you to face another day with a clear head and lots of energy — depends on a range of factors, so it’s wise to develop an effective sleep strategy instead of relying on a single trick. The key elements of good sleep, detailed in my book Make Sleep Your Superpower, include:
- Set consistent bedtimes and wake times.
- Get plenty of physical activity.
- Spend lots of time outside in natural daylight to keep your body clock properly timed.
- Effectively manage stress during the day and into the evening.
If you still need more help with slumber, a carefully crafted sleep playlist just might be music to your ears.
