Music’s power to affect our emotions is one of its most essential qualities, but also one of its most beguiling mysteries. Just how do melodies lift (or lower) our mood? and why is it that certain chord progressions somehow lasso our feelings and drag them in-step? Whatever the reason, listening to music is unquestionably the quickest way to dredge up half-faded memories and bring them back the forefront of our minds.One of the most poignant illustrations of music’s special relationship to nostalgia occurs during Danny Boyle’s 2017 sequel to his 1996 classic film, Trainspotting. The sequel, set twenty years on from the first, explores the consequences of the heroin-fuelled hedonism and life choices depicted in the iconic original. In one of its most touching moments, one of the series’ beloved characters, Spud, looks upon Edinburgh’s Calton Street Bridge and suddenly flashes back to his youth - a memory of he and his old friend (Ewan McGregor’s Renton) in the mid-90s, gleefully running toward it to escape the pursuing security guards of a shop they’d just stolen from.It’s a touching scene, but it’s really the soundtrack’s evocative, slow deployment of three haunting chords that makes us actually feel the gut-punch of Spud’s unexpected time-slip ourselves.
