Goosebumps

[Troubleshooter]

There are lots of reasons to like a song... great lyrics, skillful use of rhythm, beautiful harmony.. what ever your thing is.

One thing that never fails to amaze me is how music can take control of your emotions... alter moods... build surreal imagery in your mind... energize you... it's as if you experience the music in an intimate way.

Lots of people work out to upbeat music, something with a cadence or has an energy that gets your pumped up. I sometimes select music that is intentionally down-beat because I can use the "sadness" as motivation to struggle against it.

Regardless, there's no denying that music can create physical responses to it... lots of varied and different responses... but the one that makes a particular piece stand out to me is if it gives me goosebumps. Deriving physical pleasure from music is one way for something to instantly jump to the top of a playlist.

In my experience, it's something in the music, moments of transition usually, where the richness of the sound grows quickly, the mood changes, and I get swept along with it. This is one thing about "prog-rock" that grabs me because you see this kind of thing all the time.

As an example, the last 2 minutes of lateralus by Tool is my latest "whoa" moment. Another is the opening to "fade to black" by metalica... gets me every time. Classical music is good for this as well, but I generally lack the patience to sit through a whole piece to get the full effect.

What sort of music does this for you?

[Octopus Rex]

Well, as you already know, I agree with you on Lateralus, but I would pick a different bit from that song, I'd pick the middle with the overlapping time-signatures.

Anyway, in order not to diverge off into the Tool shed, there's various songs that give me goosebumps, but I find it very hard to pin point why. For me I can only think that it must be a certain mood, a certain tenor and tone to the piece, combined perhaps also with a personal association sometimes but necessarily. I rarely get it without vocals, perhaps even never - there's something about the human voice for me that just cuts through it all. For me goosebumps arise from a particular kind of 'good' and are not necessarily indicative of greater goodness than other reactions. It's also usually only one particular bit from a song that will give me the GBs.

Examples include:
Two for Nero by Everything Everything - sort vocal harmonized chorale, ambitious for a pop band (though they're pretty proggy)
Dream Brother by Jeff Buckley - the drum sololy bit in the middle, so fucking tasteful, reminds of getting high with my friends
Blue by Joni Mitchell - vocals with piano, just phenomenal
Backlit by ISIS - heavy heavy sludgey rock, but it's the only the end section that really gets me
Schism by Tool - the middle section, no drums, something about the mourning sound of the lines
Building by The Unbelievable Truth - a particularly simple implementation of vocals and guitar (Thom Yorke of Radiohead fame's brother's band)
Grassman by Dodgy (weird one that, from way way back, it's the guitar solo, fuck knows why though)
Sometimes by John Butler Trio - reminds me of a girl I suppose, though I don't know why

[Harmanoff]

I didn't know Thom Yorke had a brother that had a band.. good song!

Whenever i try to analyze why a song gives me goosebumps the only constant feature i find is recognition. That might be obvious of course but.. yeah. I've decided to do a little experiment this summer based on that. I'm going to a music festival in august(prince, pulp, kanye west, fleet foxes.. it will be legendary) and it being a smaller festival that is based around a city center rather than a huge field of campers i've decided to load up as many songs as i can find from the entire roster and try and learn as many of them i can(prince is quite a challenge here with 26 albums and counting). My hypothesis is that music-wise this will be the best festival i ever visited. On the other hand it might not live up to the ones were i came unprepared and was blown away by something i had never heard. We shall see.

On occasion something gives you goosebumps on first listen. I wish i could remember more of these but usually those songs and bands turn into favorites where you may have a hard time remembering when you first heard it. One that i have a crystal clear memory from is when i heard On the run by Pink Floyd. That was in a record store and this was when i was just about to develop my own taste in music rather than listen to what my friends liked. I never got past that song on Dark Side of the Moon, just bought the CD and rushed home to put it on repeat.

Ironically i often hated bands at first that now give me goosebumps. Radiohead is a prime example here, another good one is a swedish pop singer than no one here has heard of, Håkan Hellström. I hated that guy with a passion, and suddenly 6 months later i loved him with a passion and still do. Strange...

[Ra owa]

Lateralus and Schism are fantastic Tool choices for 'Goosebumps moments'.

There are plenty of songs that will get me on the first listen, and of course like anything else you can become desensitised to it through, in this case, over playing/listening.
I find that going back to a great song (such as those Tool songs) some time later can then give you the original feeling you had when you first heard it. Kind of like a nostalgia trip

One song that gets me every time is Glosoli by Sigur Ros. The whole thing just builds up to an almighty climatic ending. Beautiful, beautiful song.

[Hand of Asur]

[Rotlung]

It usually happens when you have a nice cadence that is executed beautifully. Many songs pull this off for me (typically at the end of the song), particularly:
The End by The Beatles
Layla by Derek And The Dominos
The Fountain Of Salmacis by Genesis
Cheyenne by John Arch
1921 by The Who
The Divine Wings Of Tragedy by Symphony X

Goddamnn do I love that feeling.

[Harmanoff]

So.. catching up with the post i made almost exactly 3 months ago, my experiment with said festival failed as i did not listen in on the artists like i said i would. It was, however, legendary. On the topic of goosebumps i hereby nominate Prince as the lord supreme of goosebump-inducing performances. In this case i can throw my theory about recognition being the main feature in goosebumps out the window. Sure, he did alot of songs from Purple Rain and 1999, the only two albums i had heard before, but there was a huge amount of other songs that i heard for the first time. I had no particular expecations really but he grabbed hold of the crowd from the first note and did not let go until it was over. I was dancing for 2 hours straight.. such a performance is rare indeed but looking at old videos it does not seem to be a rarity when it comes to Prince. Consider me his newest fan.

[OhJohnNo]

The outro of Space Dementia, by Muse, never fails to give me goosebumps. It's so grandiose, atmospheric... combined with the rest of the song especially. It's the perfect ending.

[Pocktio]

The lyrics and tone of this one always give me goosebumps. I think it's one of the only songs where the title literally matches the mood it puts you in, similarly the song itself fits the title perfectly. It's great, though only when I'm in the mood for it.

[OhJohnNo]

Oh, wait, how could I forget to mention this?

[Harmanoff]

<3

And to think Clare Torry just went into the studio and improvised that vocal!

[OhJohnNo]

Actually, as much as I love the singing, the piano in that song gets me more. It sounds so fittingly final.

[Harmanoff]

Apparently the song was only that (awesome) chord sequence originally. They played it live with some bits of different speeches played back here and there... i really wish i could've seen them right before DSOTM was released. I get the impression that was their peak when it came to performing.

(add long list of bands and artists to that wish btw)