One of the things that made the death of Sinéad O’Connor so profoundly sad was that the news came with a pre-recorded soundtrack. The singer made great music over many years, but the five minutes and 10 seconds of her version of Prince’s song Nothing Compares 2 U are, for more than one generation, the definitive sound of heartbreak.
The news caused millions of us to press play on that track’s haunting introduction and to hear its opening lines once again in our heads: “It’s been seven hours and 15 days, since you took your love away…” That spontaneous act prompts an age-old question: how exactly do great songs – Let It Be or Over The Rainbow or Everybody Hurts – become the shorthand of such powerful emotion? It comes as no surprise when you look into that question that O’Connor’s ballad has sometimes itself been used by psychologists and neuroscientists researching melody and the brain. After all, the empirical evidence for the emotional effect of this particular track could not be plainer: by all accounts the tears that rolled down O’Connor’s cheeks in the indelible video that accompanied its release were a surprise even to her.
