WVU in the News: Why you’re listening to more music now that life is returning to normal
For most of us, the pandemic has been a deeply life-altering event, one that’s affected everything from how we commute, how we do small talk, to how we take care of ourselves. And according to anecdotal reports, it's even changed our relationship to music. When VICE informally polled readers about their evolving listening habits last fall, they revealed all sorts of unexpected new musical habits, from exclusively listening to jazz or ambient, to finally getting into the Grateful Dead, to only checking out new hardcore bands. In some cases, previously avid music fans said they'd suddenly stopped listening to much music at all.
I was one of the people who fell into the latter camp. Though I've been obsessed with music ever since I was a kid, I found that as the pandemic dragged on I started to prefer listening to podcasts, just putting on a movie or complete silence.
Dr. Kim Innes, a biopsychologist, epidemiologist, and professor at West Virginia University School of Public Health, agreed that my musical reaction to the pandemic was normal.