You Are What You Listen To

Oxford Brookes study explores how music shapes and shifts with our lives

From teen angst soundtracks to Sunday jazz in our sixties, music is more than just background noise - it’s woven into our identity, our memory, and our emotional toolkit. Yet, despite its ubiquity, how we engage with music across our lives remains a surprisingly underexplored area of research.

That’s beginning to change, thanks to new work from Oxford Brookes University, spotlighted in the latest episode of Oxford Brookes Unscripted, a podcast exploring research from across the institution. Psychology PhD student Shannon Skeffington, together with her supervisor Dr Adam Lonsdale, delves into why we listen to music, how our preferences evolve, and what these shifts might say about us.

Shannon, now in her second year of research, is investigating how music engagement changes with age - from the music we gravitate towards to the reasons we press play in the first place. Drawing on a mix of psychological theory and personal experience as a former rehabilitation worker for people with brain injuries, she suggests that music may not only reflect who we are, but also help us manage life’s transitions.

“Music is everywhere,” she says in the podcast. “We use it to regulate our moods, to reminisce, to connect with others - or simply to pass the time. But most of the research so far focuses on young people or those at the very end of life. There’s a massive gap in the middle.”

That middle - what we might call the long adulthood - is where Shannon is focusing her attention. Her research draws on theories like Uses and Gratifications, which frames music as a tool that listeners use to meet emotional and social needs. Through surveys and analysis of listening habits across a wide age range, she’s hoping to reveal how those needs, and the music that meets them, shift over the decades.

Adam, a senior lecturer in psychology who has studied the social role of musical taste for years, notes how music often operates as a form of identity - especially in adolescence. “It’s one of the first things we use to express who we are,” he says. “Whether it’s emo, grime, or indie, our taste becomes a badge of belonging.”

But as life changes - careers, parenting, retirement - so too does our engagement with music. Shannon hypothesises that it’s not just taste that shifts, but the very function of music. Older adults may listen less frequently, or more passively, as background noise rather than a central activity. And while emotional intelligence increases with age, possibly reducing our need to process feelings through song, that doesn’t mean the music itself becomes any less meaningful.

Interestingly, her early findings suggest that people who are musicians - either professionally or as a hobby - interact with music differently. “They’re more likely to use it for learning or analysis, rather than mood management,” she says. “And many listen less at weekends. Perhaps after a week of playing or teaching, they need a break.”

The episode also touches on the phenomenon of “open-earedness” - our tolerance for unfamiliar music - which seems to peak in childhood, narrow in early adulthood, and then fluctuate again in later years. Both Shannon and Adam are clear: there’s much more to uncover.

With so few studies exploring music engagement across the full lifespan - only two major ones to date, they note - Shannon’s research is helping to lay the foundation for a field still in its infancy. Future directions include investigating the emotional power of music for those with brain injuries, and why so many of us cling to the music we discovered between the ages of 18 and 25.

Ultimately, the research raises a powerful question: what does our playlist say about who we are - and who we’re becoming?

“Music is this incredibly flexible tool,” says Adam. “It helps us wake up, wind down, connect with others, or just get through the day. The more we understand its role in our lives, the more we can appreciate its power - not just as entertainment, but as a mirror of the self.”