“What’s the one thing your readers should do to help them use music to find and catch the partner of their dreams?” asks Patrick Savage, a senior research fellow in psychology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. “Go to karaoke and sing a duet. Go and sing A Whole New World with Brad Kane and Lea Salonga. That’s the number one recommendation by science. Well, just by me. I don’t have data on this, but from my personal experience, that’s the best.”
Given that he is a musicologist, it is perhaps unsurprising that music is a key part of Savage’s relationship with his wife. But his experience with using music as a romantic tool is not unique. Love songs are found across cultures and despite not being a neat category they have historically been most popular – 67% of the top 40 tracks in America between 1960 and 2010 contained love themes.
