This Is Your Brain on MusicThe Science of a Human Obsession

A look at how the brain translates soundwaves into blips of pleasure.
For those who wonder why their neurons prefer Warrant's "Cherry Pie" to Pere Ubu's "The Modern Dance," Daniel J. Levitin's highly readable tome provides scientific, if not aesthetic, explanations. While most rock criticism balks at purely musicological analyses of why we like what we like, Levitin looks deep enough into his brain to trace how it translates soundwaves into blips of pleasure which, despite his best efforts, resist the scientific method as obstinately as a die-hard creationist does Darwinian evolution.

Novices will appreciate his straightforward definitions of rhythm, timbre, melody, tempo, and how the frontal lobe works. The rest of us appreciate a sensibility that can recognize the crucial wrinkles Steely Dan put into their chord progressions to enliven scenarios of compelling nausea, or the gumption it takes to write sentences like, "When Sting is singing, we can't take our ears off of him."

He's generous as well; reluctant to provide the musical hierarchies Nick Hornby fans live for, Levitin prefers epistemological inquiry. The book's also faintly boring, and that's okay too. If the best kind of inquiry demands an exchange of ideas that's at once playful and baleful, Levitin's book satisfies academics looking to justify their pop slumming and rockcrits who need to beef up their muso credentials.