We will rock you... to sleep

How a third of us use rousing guitar anthems to nod off to

FORGET listening to soothing strings or a soft lullaby – if you’re trying to fall asleep, then a rock anthem could strike the right chord.

Nearly a third of the songs that we use to help us drift off are rousing anthems, a study has found.

Analysis of more than 225,000 tracks in playlists for sleep found a surprising 31 per cent were classic tunes by artists like Bryan Adams and Coldplay.

Although more prefer slower instrumental music such as Brahms’s Lullaby, many opt for something more anthemic, such as Coldplay’s The Scientist and Perfect by Ed Sheeran.

Researchers do not know if these rousing songs did help sleepers doze off.

But they suspect the familiarity of such classics may put people in a good, relaxed mood and make them ready for slumber.

Among the most popular were (Everything I Do) I

Do It For You by Bryan Adams and Aretha Franklin’s (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.

Senior study author Dr Kira Vibe Jespersen, from the Centre for Music in the Brain at Aarhus University in Denmark, said: ‘I wouldn’t listen to Bryan Adams to try to get to sleep, personally, but more energetic music may work for some people.

‘From a brain perspective, if you listen to a fast pop or rock song you know very well, it is predictable, so may help with relaxation.

‘We are currently working to test the hypothesis that familiarity is an important factor for sleep music.’

The study, in the journal Plos One, looked at nearly 1,000 playlists relating to sleep and compiled by listeners around the world on streaming service Spotify.

Out of six categories, the most popular was ‘ ambient’ – meditative songs, sounds of nature, or instrumental tracks.

Three groups, of nearly 70,000 of the total 225,626 pieces, were substantially different from the average.

One was mostly rap and R&B, the others had modern radio tunes such as Falling by Harry Styles and the Ed Sheeran and Coldplay songs.

It was not known in which the Bryan Adams and Aretha Franklin tracks are, but they are likely to be in these groups.

While surprised by the variety of music, Dr Jespersen added that classics such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star still featured.