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Home » Listen to the Bee Gees and improve your brain power

Listen to the Bee Gees and improve your brain power

The New Neo Posted on by

I was going to write the next installment of my eye story. But after disgorging this enormous post just now, I don’t have it in me at the moment and will postpone it to some future but not-too-distant date.

I’d rather do something more fun, like listen to the Bee Gees while walking outside. And commenter “Ruth” has provided us all with this link if we require justification:

Scientists have discovered that listening to ‘groovy’ music, from artists like the Bee Gees or ABBA, can actually boost brain performance.

The results of a study by the University of Tsukuba in Japan found that songs with a groove rhythm enhanced the ‘executive function’ of the listener.

Executive function is a set of mental skills that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember and multitask.

However, these results were only seen on participants who were familiar with groove music, or had good rhythm.

‘The results were surprising,’ said lead author Professor Hideaki Soya.

‘We found that groove rhythm enhanced executive function and activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex only in participants who reported that the music elicited a strong groove sensation and the sensation of being clear-headed.’

Makes perfect sense to me. Some people hate the Bee Gees, but the people who like them tend to love them and be at least somewhat addicted to listening to their music. That would be me, and millions of others.

I find that certain Bee Gees songs accomplish it more than others (and I’m not much of an ABBA fan at all). But the Bee Gees songs I prefer aren’t limited to ones that demonstrate “grooviness” (I assume they mean disco? I associate the word “groovy” with an earlier era, the 60s, but I don’t think that’s what they’re talking about, when the Bee Gees’ output feature more ballads).

I haven’t quite figured out the commonality in my favorite Bee Gees songs. But the Bee Gees could sing almost anything – almost – and I’d like it, because I find their voices, particularly their non-falsetto voices, both beautiful and strangely hypnotic. Many of their fans say the same thing, and often use the words “calming” and “relaxing” as well.

For those who dislike the Bee Gees sound, that is the opposite of how they feel.

I’ve also mentioned that the Bee Gees wrote so many songs that they have enormous numbers that they never released during their time together. Quite a few of these songs are only in demo form, and many are now available either on later compilations or just on YouTube. I’ve listened to quite a few, and I find that many of them are incredibly good. There are also songs they released that never got much airplay and are known only to extreme aficionados, and many of those are excellent too.

Here’s one of that latter group that was written for the 1983 movie “Staying Alive,” the sequel to the blockbuster film “Saturday Night Fever.” It was on the 1983 movie album but that film didn’t do well and the songs for it sort of got lost in the shuffle. 1983 was also the era of the backlash to the Bee Gees, but the movie itself apparently wasn’t very good either.

This is the demo version of the song, which I somewhat prefer to the version on the record (although that one’s pretty good, too).

So here’s to enhancing your executive function this weekend:

And here’s the more polished version that was on the album:

The lyrics can be found here. I don’t think they’re exactly correct (one line says “I’ll never be the same again” but I hear it instead as “I’ll never love the same again”), but they’re close enough.

Comments

Listen to the Bee Gees and improve your brain power — 40 Comments

  1. Neo’s speculations aside. I still have no idea what “groove rhythm” is. FWIW I usually listen to either classical music or comedy podcasts while working.

  2. Dwaz– I’m with you about the classical music. If I want to improve my brain power, I listen to Bach. There’s so much music catalogued in the BWV (1126 works at last count, vocal and instrumental) that I’m not likely to run out.

  3. Happy Battle of Midway Anniversary. Happy. Happy. Noot so happy. But it needs to be remembered. If I doesn’t go here it doesn’t go anywhere.

  4. I don’t have my own blog because almost all the time somebody has already said what I wanted to say.

  9. My impression is that a music groove is not quite the same as groovy, though the meaning of the latter is pretty flexible and could be used that way.

    My first musical thought would be something like the walking bass line. That’s normally a jazz thing, though I see there is a blues version as well.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76azkeDhdCA

    It could be, and maybe is in this context, just anything with a strong drum and bass line that makes you want to move with it.

    Speaking of grooves, walking, and the Bee Gees, who could forget this?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfwQ_7xqO7Y

    It’s not a walking bass line but it definitely has a groove.

  10. I think it was 15 or 20 years ago, but somebody produced a whole TV series based on the battle of Midway. The cool part was that they got considerable funding from the Enterprise car rental company and did extensive CGI computer graphics in order to put the viewers POV into the events.

    The founder of Enterprise rentals company was on the carrier Enterprise in some capacity. I don’t recall any other searchable details unfortunately.

  11. “The results of a study by the University of Tsukuba in Japan found that songs with a groove rhythm enhanced the ‘executive function’ of the listener.

    Executive function is a set of mental skills that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember and multitask.”

    I find that entirely plausible.

    A number of studies have confirmed that plant growth responds to different forms of music. It may come as a welcome or unwelcome surprise to learn that plants prefer classical to hard rock, grunge, metal i.e. dissonant ‘music’.
    “Playing Music For Plants – How Does Music Affect Plant Growth”

    On average men are composed of about 60% water and women 55%.
    <a href="https://www.zumusic.org/news/432-hz-water/“432 Hz WATER (the Creator is YOU) ! Masaru Emoto’s experiment(s)”

    So perhaps it not entirely surprising that babies in the womb respond to music. <a href="https://parentingscience.com/how-do-babies-respond-to-music-in-the-womb/#:~:text=Do%20fetuses%20actually%20respond%20to,to%20the%20sounds%20they%20hear.“How do babies respond to music in the womb?”

    “In the last trimester of pregnancy, babies become increasingly capable of hearing a range of musical tones, and studies confirm that babies react — in the womb — to the sounds they hear. Moreover, if a late-term fetus “overhears” the same melody again and again, it will likely recognize this tune later — when it hears the music as a newborn.”

    Even unicef is on board.
    <a href="https://www.unicef.org/parenting/child-development/how-music-affects-your-babys-brain-class“How music affects your baby’s brain: Mini Parenting Master Class”
    Discover how tapping into music can benefit your child.

    So… given all of the above, arguably playing dissonant music in home with young children is harmful to their optimum development. While not playing uplifting music does them a disservice.

    Grrr… can’t get the stupid html links right. Preview doesn’t work with this browser and I’m out of time!

  12. All the links work as i can see. Its a wonder saturday night fever with john badham who waxed darker with wargames and blue thunder and la femme nikita was poorly followed up in a film that didnt get travoltas character

  13. The Bee Gees hardly invented groove music. Nor did Abba. But the groove will getcha, if you don’t watch out!

    As most musicians and fans, at least in the jazz, blues and rock worlds, know.

    In classical music the groove is subtler but still there. Indian music, definitely.

    I recall the big trend in the 80s to play baroque music to babies and students was in vogue. There were even claims that baroque made plants grow better.

  14. Miguel,
    I had fun watching that opening clip of Saturday Night Fever and was floored to see that it was directed by John Badham. Yes, he had these great action films, Point of No Return (la Femme Nikita was a later TV series; Nikita was the original French film) and Drop Zone are faves of mine. Point of No Return featured the music of Nina Simone very nicely.

  16. Ah nina simone her work has been in man from uncle which actually ocurred slightly before when she hit it big and the most recent thomas crown affair

  18. Hi Neo–

    Your site was down from 8:30 a.m. (East Coast time) until just now (9:22). The message was “Internal Server Error #500”– whatever that means.

  19. PA+Cat, not sure it was Neo. I had a lot of trouble this morning connecting at all, then it finally kicked in around 830. Some sites are still unavailable. I’m in Jax, FL, so maybe it was a more widespread east coast problem still being worked out.

    At least it forced me to rest the modem in my search for the problem. We should do that about once a month but tend to get lazy and forget.

  21. There’s a book by a famous author (Michener?) that includes dramatic coverage of Midway. He stops his narration and, as I recall, essentially says: Here are the names of the American pilots who flew steadfastly towards the Japanese carrier. Every one of them was shot down, all but one died, but their sacrifice drew off protective Japanese fighter planes and allowed a second set of American planes to bomb and sink the carrier.

    I’ve probably got plenty of details wrong … but whoever the writer, it was plenty dramatic.

  22. I respect Neo’s passion for the BeeGees. I wish I could partake. Mostly I just like their disco phase because it’s danceable.

  24. Jeanne and Tommy Jay, if you watch their One Night Only concert from Vegas, they cover the whole range of their material. Really excellent, and good reminder of their non disco music.

  26. The Rascals had a fine pop hit in the 60s, “Groovin’ (On a Sunday Afternoon)”. They were known then for blue-eyed soul. Well, it’s Sunday afternoon…

    The band kinda fell apart and had lots of personnel changes. I don’t know the whole story, but Felix Cavaliere was apparently the last man standing and he took the band into new territory, resulting in one of my favorite “groove” albums, “Peaceful World.”

    The title song is a 21 minute instrumental based on a single, simple organ groove. However, it went way beyond blue-eyed soul. Not that I have anything against such soul, but “Peaceful World” was something else with several top-flight jazz players on board. It sounded more like it belonged on one of those great 70s ECM fusion jazz albums.

    –“The Rascals : Peaceful World”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uziSB-N5iFA

    Let AllMusic tell it:
    ________________________________

    Peaceful World is a wonderful blend of soul, jazz, and funk that never found an audience. Perhaps it was because the positive sentiments expressed in the lyrics were unfortunately becoming passé; perhaps it was the diversity of the two-record set itself. Despite its lack of commercial success, this was an artistic triumph for Felix Cavaliere. With a supporting cast including jazz luminaries Joe Farrell, Hubert Laws, Alice Coltrane, and Ron Carter, Cavaliere creates a musical vision of the Peaceful World conjured up by the album’s title. The single, “Love Me,” which barely cracked the Hot 100, is a piece of funk in a Sly Stone vein. Guitarist Buzz Feiten’s “In and Out of Love” is one of those shoulda-been-a-hit-single songs. Many of the tracks, including the side-long (21:25) title track, are mellow jazz excursions. This ambitious album took the Rascals to the place Cavaliere had been headed over the course of the last couple of albums — but, sadly, the fans didn’t follow.

    https://www.allmusic.com/album/peaceful-world-mw0000231165

  27. Executive function is a set of mental skills that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember and multitask.

    I perked up when I saw this mention of “executive function.”

    Now that we’ve got good brain scan imaging tools, researchers have noticed that psychedelics light up a lot of the brain areas — except for those concerned with executive function.

    Which fits for those of us who are “Experienced” as Jimi Hendrix put it. It’s hard to stay linearly “on task” when everything is melting together. Or more gently as Uncle Aldous explained:
    __________________________

    To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.

    –Aldous Huxley, “The Doors of Experience.”
    __________________________

    Today there is a quiet psychedelic renaissance going on in science and underground. I’m working my way through current papers and articles. Interesting stuff. Science is coming out of its Dark Age regarding psychedelics.

  28. huxley:

    “…which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet…”

  29. One of the interesting things to me about disco is how many people who hated it, or said they hated it, have come around to admitting it wasn’t that bad. Maybe that is just people getting older and identifying with their younger days or it could be something in the music. Even some of the acts that jumped on the trend to varying degrees actually put out songs that are pretty good in retrospect. I think of ‘Miss You’ by the Rolling Stones and this is a personal favorite of mind that is damn hard to NOT sing along to.

    Electric Light Orchestra

    ‘Last Train To London’

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up4WjdabA2c

  30. neo:

    Well, stayin’ alive is Job One on the planet, so no kicks against that.

    However, did the Bee Gees ever get beyond strut/dance/get down/fall in love/get heartbroken songs?

    I can’t think of any beyond the folkish sorta topical song, “New York Mining Disaster 1941.”

    I’m strong for interesting lyrics and the Brothers never caught my ear on that account.

  31. One of the interesting things to me about disco is how many people who hated it, or said they hated it, have come around to admitting it wasn’t that bad.

    Griffin:

    I think some of it is realizing how bad pop music has gotten of late. Similarly, 80s music sounds like a Golden Age to me now.

    Although I never hated disco. I liked to dance and disco really livened up the Saturday night parties I went to back then. I bought the two-disc Donna Summer album and still have a soft spot for her.

  32. huxley:

    Donna Summer – what a voice! Fabulous.

    The Bee Gees oeuvre is 1000+ songs. They wrote on a wide variety of things. You probably are familiar with just a few. Their big topic was indeed love, but that’s true of a lot of songwriters and songs. But they also wrote philosophical songs, surreal songs, funny songs, all sorts of things. By the way, are you familiar with the actual words of “Stayin’ Alive”? Have you ever looked at the lyrics? They’re not about strutting (that’s the rhythm of it and the way it was used in the movie), they’re about being desperate and trying to survive in a city that’s falling apart. They wrote the song before they ever were asked to write for the movie, and they didn’t see it as a disco song, it was a survival song.

    Life goin’ nowhere,
    somebody help me,
    yeah
    I’m stayin’ alive…

    Now, I’m not saying the Bee Gees were Leonard Cohen in the lyrics department. But a lot of their lyrics are good, and although they wrote a lot about love they wrote about a lot of other things too. You yourself remember “New York Mining Disaster,” but in that same era there was “I’ve Got to Get a Message to You” and tons of others that weren’t conventional love songs or disco music. To take a few other examples, some early and some later, there’s “World,” “Edge of the Universe,” “Blue Island,” “Close Another Door,” “I Started a Joke,” “Songbird,” “Winds of Change,” “Walking Back to Waterloo,” “Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You.” These are not necessarily my favorite songs (although I like some of them a lot) by the Bee Gees, but they show some of their range.

  33. Life goin’ nowhere,
    somebody help me,
    yeah
    I’m stayin’ alive…

    neo:

    Wow, that’s weak tea. That’s high school stuff. Completely trite. No images, no interesting sounds or language.

    Just about any top-line rock group or singer-songwriter from the 60s and 70s had far better verses and more of them. I remember a few of the other songs and I’m not impressed either.

    We’ll have to agree to disagree as we usually do.

  34. huxley:

    I made it quite clear I wasn’t saying that was some sort of cosmically wonderful poetry, or even wonderful poetry at all. I was using it to illustrate that the song’s SUBJECT MATTER is not light nor is it about love. The song’s subject matter is desperation in a city that’s falling apart, from someone who feels beaten down.

    How you translate that into the idea that I’m saying that’s some sort of great lyric is beyond me.

    What it is, though, is a great song, with a subject that is neither light nor about love.

  36. So, if certain types of music are beneficial to brain function, that perhaps suggests that other types of music are detrimental to brain function and/or can elicit /encourage “bad’ behavior in certain personality types.

    Just speculating.

  37. One of the interesting things to me about disco is how many people who hated it, or said they hated it, have come around to admitting it wasn’t that bad.

    No, it was that bad.

  38. I don’t recall ever seeing that official video of Stayin’ Alive and was struck by its unexpected visual content. Bullet pock marks on the steeple wall. And that train at the end. Where is this? The train says “(something) York Central.”

    I do like the Badham movie intro better. Of course, it’s fun, and the official video is not intended to be that.
    _____

    I’m sort of the opposite of huxley. The singers could be singing Oo La La, and I would judge the song about the same, at least initially.

    I think it was some music documentary, but someone claimed that Frank Zappa was intensely interested in composing and didn’t really have an interest in lyrics, at least when he was younger. Then he realized that he didn’t want to be a starving composer and decided that he better have someone sing with some interesting lyrics so he could make some money too.

    Sometimes surprising “facts” like that one, are just WRONG. Grain of salt.

    I was once on a long long chair lift ride up a ski mountain with a good friend of mine during which he sang or spoke the entire weird and long lyric to a Zappa song. Word perfect of course. Ah, misspent youth. One of those indelible memories.

  39. Pingback:Long Thoughts

  40. How fun to read other commentators here who also are fond of disco.

    My husband and I do a bit of weight lifting together and afterwards turn on music and dance. Disco works best. We met on the disco floor 40 years ago. It’s nostalgia. Who would have thought?

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