Swaying drowsily in bus 179 in the middle of December, I envision a winter season that melds Singaporean rain and my mind’s yearning for snow. With Airpods popped into each ear, I press play on Alvvays’ Blue Rev and let the phantom chilling breeze glide over my limbs. On days like this, I only listen to cold songs. Songs are cold not just because of their subject matter, but also because of the music theory and world-building behind them. Powerful music leverages human beings’ inherent music-temperature synaesthesia to induce a listening experience that propels its intentions. Indeed, I believe that we all have such an inherent synaesthesia which can be trained through a closer appreciation of the music we hear amidst mundanity.
Without delving too much into the details of my personal life, I would say that my insatiable desire to belong drives my fascination with cold songs. When one feels alienated in a physical environment they are subjected to, they turn to metaphysical ways to transport themselves to a place where they feel a sense of belonging. A place where they feel equipped to thrive and achieve life goals that fuel their inner needs. Cold songs carry a certain attitude, culture and lifestyle associated with colder regions of the Earth. While listening to them, the sweaty, extraverted hustle of warm weather regions mellows under an avalanche of powdery snow, making way for introversion, serenity and coldness. If you relate to feeling alienated by your physical environment, you could view this article as a guide to feeling more at ease through appreciating the musical escapism in music-temperature synaesthesia. Nevertheless, this phenomenon itself is intriguing and offers a new dimension of hearing that everyone can become cognizant of. It warrants an investigation of the unique characteristics of cold songs that engender their iciness.
Genre
Genre and geography are inextricably linked when talking about music. Often in each music category, there are several subcategories determined by the music piece’s place of origin. Taking the ostensibly ubiquitous genre of pop as an example, the most commonly heard pop music around the world is American, owing to the genre’s American origins. Other subgenres like Swedish Pop or Cantopop, while remaining in the pop umbrella, have traits and flairs to set themselves apart from American Pop and remind listeners of the music’s geographical standpoint.
There are other genres of music without a country’s label but remain reminiscent of a certain weather or climate. Blue Rev, a dream pop record with shoegaze influences, features woozy guitars, distorted, reverberating synths and foggy vocals. The genre of shoegaze lends its quintessential characteristics of being droning and bereft of instrumental definition to the album, conjuring a cold, introverted (or perhaps, introspective) environment. Arguably, it also signals the tendency to stay indoors in the winter. Undoubtedly, genre is imperative in setting the parameters of a song’s atmosphere and can greatly influence the ‘temperature’ of music. However, I also believe that it should be treated as a loose formula for achieving a certain sonic aesthetic and should not stifle an artist’s creative expression due to their strict but unnecessary adherence to it.
Pitch
Admittedly, there is little to no scientific literature on the association of pitch and temperature. I surmise that the thinness of the sound waves of higher pitches reminds listeners of being exposed to cold weather. In contrast, a thicker sound wave mimics a warm blanket wrapped around them.
I vividly remember listening to Florence + The Machine’s Leave My Body in my childhood, trying to decipher the chilly euphoria it lent me that compelled me to start a Spotify playlist named Icy Spectacular Spasms. In hindsight, this sensation was mainly enkindled by Florence Welch’s unparalleled shrill and high-pitched vocals. She bellows:
“Yeah, said I’m gonna leave my body
(Moving up to higher ground)
I’m gonna lose my mind
(History keeps pulling down)” (Florence + The Machine, 2011)
Welch dramatically declares her transcendence to a higher plane that matches in height with the grandiose display of her upper vocal register. At the same time, the twinkling trebles of the instrumentals replace the bass, conjuring an image of being lifted into space and embracing the freeze. Welch emphasises the trebles to thrust the song into its chilly climax, conferring a euphoric, satisfying sense of coolness that transcends the physical boundaries of the listeners’ environment.
One might notice that instruments generally considered ‘wintry’ are often high-pitched too. Such instruments include the glockenspiel, xylophone and wind chimes. I assume that the cold aesthetic of wind chimes derives from the presence of a breeze which manifests as tinny noises through the clashing of the chimes. On the other hand, the other aforementioned instruments may sound cold due to their association with Christmas, winter and bell sounds. Björk capitalises on this association in her album Vespertine, most notably in the interlude Frosti, which is a glockenspiel passage through a picturesque snowy biome (Björk, 2001). Once again, the dominant trebles of this track emanate a sensation of chilliness that ties together with the wintry theme of the record.
Scale
Sometimes, artists harness a song’s scale to invoke a powerful aesthetic linked to temperature. When talking about coldness, whole tone scales and the Lydian mode come to mind. Both of these scales tend to sound airy and ethereal, ideal for a wispy snow angel’s personal soundtrack. Regina Spektor’s 20 Years of Snow utilises the whole tone scale to accentuate the track’s snowy imagery and convey a melancholic message. She vocalises through a winding passage:
“While you
Stare at your books
And the words float out like holograms
And the words float out like holograms
And the words float out like holograms” (Spektor, 2006)
The swift, numerous droplets of piano keys in whole-tone scale, contrasted with the vocal repetition of words, as hollow as holograms, floating out of books, link the wintry piano notes to the words. This linkage creates a sense of chaos in the words’ movement while reminding listeners of the reader’s lack of affection. Therefore, it can be seen that Spektor employs cold imagery and sound to showcase the person’s introversion, and in other words, their lack of warmth.
Lyrics
At first glance, using a song’s lyrics to induce coldness seems to be the most straightforward technique out of the rest I have mentioned. However, the palpability of sound-temperature synaesthesia entails a meticulous execution of songwriting as well. Simply referring to cold themes and objects does not engender a cooling effect. Arguably, one function of lyrics is to offer nuance, and hence realism, in the feeling it evokes, intensifying its power to penetrate the hearts of listeners as it matches the complexities of the mind.
Peering at the tracklist of Hozier’s album Unreal Unearth, the song To Someone From A Warm Climate (Uiscefhuaraithe) stuck out to me, immediately hinting at the singer’s perspective from a colder region, addressing a person at a warmer place. The alternative title in parentheses was an interesting enigma that unravelled itself not only by its being defined in the song lyrics, but also through the song’s storytelling that highlighted the mystical, flowing essence of the word. Hozier belts “ ‘Uiscefhuaraithe’/ The feel of coldness only water brings” (Hozier, 2023), bringing to attention the centrepiece of the song, an Irish word that bears a highly specific meaning the English language cannot completely express. The rest of the song compensates for the inadequacy of the English language, suggesting the context of this coolness and referring to the act of warming the bed with your body in cold weather, as Hozier sings:
“A joy hard learned in winter was the warming of the bed
You’d shake for minutes there and move your legs
Wrap the blanket over you and keep your head within
Let your breath heat the air until you’d feel it getting thin” (Hozier, 2023)
Hozier sets up a juxtaposition of a person in warm weather seeking coldness through water, and himself in cold weather seeking warmth under a blanket. The contrast between these two people suggests their possession of unique qualities being brought up in different climates, moulding each of their love languages to make them one as they interlock in union.
To Someone From A Warm Climate (Uiscefhuaraithe) is a masterclass in employing lyrics to bring to mind a highly specific experience in life that has never been put into words before. His perspective as a person from a cold climate forms the frosty foundation of the track, which is shaded by its context – the vivid image of seeking warmth, which is subsequently contrasted with his lover’s mitigation of warmth. These different aspects work in tandem with each other, culminating in a moving love song that is amplified by its sensation of coldness.
World-building
As demonstrated through Hozier’s track, a song’s devices are not isolated but instead work synergistically to give rise to a message or an intended effect. When these devices synergise not only in a song but within a body of work, I consider it an engagement with world-building, which transports listeners to an encompassing landscape. Thinking back to Alvvays, listeners’ first exposure to Blue Rev is its album cover, depicting vocalist Molly Rankin’s family during childhood on a boat, against a foggy, blue sky filled with foreboding dark clouds. The cover hints at the album’s presentation of her formative years in coastal Nova Scotia, with references to cold, rainy weather and nautical imagery.
Certainly, the lyrical content upholds the established theme, as Rankin expresses that she “[feels] the northern tide”, “[knowing] you’ll be there in the rain” and drinking “Blue Rev behind the rink” (Alvvays, 2022).
This last set of lyrics mentions the album title, set in a song in the album’s last quarter, supplemented by an ecstatic key change that signals the pinnacle of the album. Consequently, listeners are compelled to recognise the track as the hallmark of the album and appreciate the intended flow of the tracklist that bolsters the height of this climax. The flow of the album induces a sense of storytelling, which further drives the world-building as it matches the passing of time in life.
These are just some of the elements of this album that work together to simulate a cold sonic environment that listeners can live vicariously within, as if they were breathing the crisp, salty air of Nova Scotia. With an artist’s respectful treatment of the concept of an album as a singular, cohesive body of work, they are bound to construct a world that powerfully sucks listeners into itself and compellingly showcases the nuances of life.
I pop my AirPods back into its case. The chill lingers but I know it will subside soon. What is permanent, however, is a deep enthusiasm for music, cold or warm, and the unexplored territory of loose associations. This article is not meant to be an objective explanation of ‘music-temperature synaesthesia’. It revels in its subjectivity and is meant to encourage you, the reader, to embrace your loose associations, using them to reinvigorate your touch with your inner self. Eventually, you might find that your ‘unsubstantiated’ associations are in fact universal, and that inspirations amongst these associations abound.
References
Alvvays. (2022). Blue Rev [Album]. Celsius Girls.
Björk. (2001). Frosti [Song]. On Vespertine. One Little Independent Records.
Florence + The Machine. (2011). Leave My Body [Song]. On Ceremonials. Universal Island Records.
Hozier. (2023). To Someone From A Warm Climate (Uscefhuaraithe) [Song]. On Unreal Unearth. Rubyworks Limited.
Regina Spektor. (2006). 20 Years of Snow [Song]. On Begin to Hope. Sire Records.