Some songs fuel your workout and some get you through the workday. However, according to Spotify, music is just as important to every listener's love life.
The streaming music service just released data from its Spotify's Science Behind the Song study, which took a peek at the relationship between music and romance. The end result? It's soundtrack over six-pack in the bedroom, people.
Spotify commissioned Dr. Daniel Müllensiefen from Goldsmiths at the University of London for the study. One of the tidbits that came out of his research is that over 40 percent of respondents said that they are actually more turned on by their partner's love-time playlist than that person's actual touch.
"It is no surprise that so many respondents claimed to find music arousing in the bedroom," said Dr. Müllensiefen. "From neuro-scientific research we know that music can activate the same pleasure centers of the brain that also respond to much less abstract rewards such as food, drugs or indeed sex."
Even more surprising than those claims -- or the fact that this study even took place -- is what music gets people the most sexed up. The soundtrack to the 1987 film Dirty Dancing was named the best soundtrack for the bedroom, meaning that just about any of the songs featured would put respondents in an amorous mood. Also, Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" appears to have magical romance powers, ranking as the number one song to "get in the mood" or to listen to during a romantic dinner. The number-two spot on the mood list also went to Gaye's "Let's Get It On."
"The study unveiled that the best tracks for seduction in the bedroom -- essentially what gets us in the mood -- all possess the same qualities including a greater dynamic range, more use of the high chest voice, more raspiness in the voice and less use of vocal vibrato," said Dr. Müllensiefen. "These specific attributes are strongly evident in the Marvin Gaye tracks 'Sexual Healing' and 'Let's Get It On.'"
If you're looking to bypass the bedroom altogether, Spotify has 20 songs that survey participants claimed to be even better than sex. One in three people put Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" at the very top of that "better than sex" list. Kings of Leon's "Sex On Fire" took second place on the list, with the ‘90s Robbie Williams ballad "Angels" coming in third.
Spotify has created a series of romantic playlists based on the voting from the survey. Click on each of the following links to launch each playlist in the Spotify application:
"Music provides the soundtrack to the lives of Spotify users every day, wherever and whenever they are, and Spotify's study reveals today that music plays a particularly big role when it comes to our love lives," Angela Watts, VP of global communications for Spotify. "We now know that Marvin Gaye is key to success when it comes to seducing a partner in the bedroom. And if you don't have a partner, we can highly recommend Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' which is officially ‘Better than sex!'"
Spotify's Science Behind the Song study featured 2,000 people aged between 18 and 91 years old, with an almost equal gender split.
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