Self Esteem and the power of live music (by Michelle Phillips and Jason Taylor)

“All the days you get to have are big”

So broadcast the poster that many of us left gig venues around the UK with recently - a reminder of the joy of each day, and of living life to the full. But it’s not only the words that are powerful, it’s the song and the artist that is belting this message out across her current UK tour of her latest album ‘A complicated Woman’, whose music demands and deserves our attention.

Self Esteem (aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor) has taken the music industry by storm with her bold, powerful, and innovative artistry, which combines everything you want in a song to bop around the kitchen to, dance it out in a club, or have a good cry, with messaging around equality, representation and inclusion. She is a powerhouse, a tireless advocate for multiple social agendas, with gender equality at the heart of what she stands for, e.g. the gut wrenching utterance at the end of ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ of ‘I thought that you’d be kind to me’; this line is so simple and effective - after a song full of top-of-lungs-shouted first-person empowerment, the mood suddenly switches to vulnerability, remorse, and disappointment. Self Esteem is a shining example of why we have, and need, music in our lives. Music is a powerful means and platform for messaging and advocacy. Combined with music that moves and stirs us, sentences are supercharged to go into our ears and explode in our minds and hearts.

Recently we revelled in the chance to see that power of music levelled up to the max in Self Esteem’s touring live show. When this combination of awesome music and magnificent messaging passes not only into your ears and brain, but pulses through the floor and from the walls, and a full scale visual production with dancers and a band of musicians beams through your eyeballs, it’s a beautifully overwhelming and joyous moment experience, a memorable big day.

For us, being part of this immersive and immersing live show demonstrated so much of what we’re fascinated with, passionate about, and dedicated to investigating: the power of live music. Our collaboration as researchers in music, neuroscience and psychology across our two institutions - the Royal Northern College of Music and the University of Manchester - now spans many happy and productive years. With colleagues, friends, and music industry partners, we have dedicated our research to exploring the role of music in human lives. An early project together examined whether people responded differently to live compared to live-streamed music, using behavioural, neurological and physiological measures. More recently we’ve been part of an international team looking at whether, when we make music together, our neurons might start to fire at the same rates as one another, which could be a sign of social connection.

What we know from our own and other research, is that music has a special place in our lives, whether we queue desperately for hours for Oasis or Taylor Swift tickets, we are season ticket holders for our local or national orchestra, we sing as part of a community choir or church congregation each week, we help our children to learn the alphabet using a song, we make up and sing special songs for our pets, we feel the emotional impact of the music in our favourite films and video games, or we listen to the latest hits on the radio while we make lunch. And over the last 40 years, academic research has begun to reveal why music plays a vital role in people’s lives all around the world - it is a human universal, it helps us to bond socially, and our capacity for pitch and rhythm prepares us for everyday life.

Research on live music experiences underlines what we value and seek in that special environment. Our sense of liveness involves feeling physically present, feeling immersed, and sharing an experience with fellow listeners and with the performers. Live music events facilitate and generate social connection, and while we listen, there is evidence that we may move and breathe together.

It was a thrill to be immersed in the Self Esteem crowd, and to witness all of these research findings unfurling around us. As the iconic ‘Cheers to me’ chorus rang out, groups began to spontaneously pogo jubilantly along with the music. Without any cueing at all audience clusters started jumping up and down in time with the beat, and as they looked around, everyone else was doing the same. Pure joy. And we in this moment didn't need rigorous research methods, scientific tech, tests of statistical significance or hyperscanning to show how in-sync everyone was! And the same applies to the pure empathy that seemed to wash over us in waves at various moments during the evening (oh how ‘What Now’ pulled us in and wrenched out our guts!), as we jointly choked back tears and shared an emotional state that the magic of music permitted us.

Everything that music and humanness means to us, was here. Thank you, Self Esteem for a very memorable big day.

by Michelle Phillips and Jason Taylor