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Updated: May 7, 2025

Assessing the Effects of Music Listening on Psychobiological Stress in Daily Life
Published on: February 2, 2017
Lyrics do matter: how "coping songs" relate to well-being goals. The COVID pandemic case
Adi Levy1, Roni Granot2, Renana Peres1
1The Hebrew University Business School, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.
Introduction:
In stressful times, people often listen to "coping songs" that help them reach emotional well-being goals. This paper is a first attempt to map the connection between an individual's well-being goals and their chosen coping song.
Methods:
We assembled a large-scale dataset of 2,804 coping songs chosen by individuals from 11 countries during COVID-19 lockdown. Individuals reported their well-being goals and also named their coping song. We applied an unsupervised topic-modeling approach to identify 15 self-emerging topics from the song lyrics, and connected them to well-being goals.
Results:
We found significant association between certain lyrics' topics and specific well-being goals. This association weakened for participants for which music is highly important. No significant patterns were found for the songs' acoustic features.
Discussion:
This paper posits that song lyrics, despite their brevity and presumed simplicity, can be meaningful for self-regulation of emotional states, and should receive more attention by researchers and streaming services alike.
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