The science behind 'killing' a song when you listen to it too much

One minute a song is catchy as hell and all you can listen to for days on end, then suddenly it stops sounding quite so good. You can't put your finger on it, but it feels like it's just not interacting with your brain in the same way. Eventually, it joins the list of songs you’ve killed by listening to them too many times.

So, what exactly happens inside our brains that makes a song lose its magic? It turns out no one knows for certain, but there are a few theories about the cause of this phenomenon.

Neuroscientists believe that our brains go through two stages when we listen to a piece of music that gives us the chills. The caudate nucleus in the brain anticipates the build-up of our favourite part of a song as we listen, while the nucleus accumbens is triggered by the peak causing the release of endorphins. It is believed that the more we get to know a piece of music, the less fired-up our brains will be in anticipating this peak.

There are two main reasons why music may become boring and fall out of favour,The first reason is overexposure to the song. Experiments have demonstrated that appreciation decreases once the novelty of a piece of music has worn off, and that we often become bored with a song that has become over familiar.”

The other key factor is how complex a song is. The more there is going on in a song the more likely it is to fire off the right signals in our brains. Evidence shows the more complex the stimuli in a song the more likely a person will like it with time, while the opposite is the case for simple stimuli, says Dr Bonshor.