If there’s one thing that supports the idea that music holds some sort of ununderstood magic, it’s watching a baby react to it. It elicits some natural response, free of the social conditions and constructs that come with growing up.
Life lessons, both good and bad, shape our perception of the world and those around us. The times we fall and learn to get back up, the love and loss we experience, all play a role. Music, if you’re lucky enough to hear it, connects us to the ethereal part of life—the unexplainable shimmer behind the veil.
Certain styles of music can pull emotional responses from us regardless of whether we’re hearing them for the first time or the ten thousandth. Sad songs and emotional love songs often hold the formula for frisson, a French term for the shiver that rushes down your spine when a piece of art connects with you. It roughly translates to “aesthetic chill,” which is quite accurate.
The physical feeling we get when a chord change drops into a minor key or has that resolve when a chord progression comes full circle to give that built-up tension the relief we unknowingly yearn for. I won’t get too in the weeds with musical theory, but it’s really about the relation of sounds to one another, both a physical and almost spiritual thing that we can pick apart scientifically, or just learn to notice and appreciate. They’re just sound waves and vibrations, and they affect us physically, but they’re also beautiful in a sort of poetic or empyrean way.
We have an example of this in the video we are discussing today. A video of a young grandmother singing a Carpenters song to a four-month-old baby. The Carpenters, known for their easy listening, mostly laid-back sound, are often written off as schmaltz because, at times, they were.
However, they were also incredibly talented musicians and songwriters, with Karen Carpenter being particularly skilled in this regard. They had three number one singles and five number two singles on the Billboard 100, as well as a scattering of other charting tracks, during their 14-year career. They knew how to turn a tune.
This grandmother is singing the song “I Know I Need To Be In Love” to a laughing baby. It’s a very pretty song, so the baby’s reaction makes sense. We see the little bundle of joy entranced with his grandmother. At around four months, babies’ eyesight develops significantly. They can start to see color for the first time. Depth perception also begins to emerge, allowing them to focus on finer details. Babies can begin to see objects within about twelve feet. So this baby, on top of hearing this song, is really seeing what’s going on for one of the first times in its little unblemished life.
We see the baby mimicking the grandmother’s mouth movements, wanting to join in the song, practically the entire way through. We see the expression morph from change to change and note to note, mostly one of joy and excitement, but we also see these big tears welling up in those eyes.
Baby’s first happy tears, maybe? That’s a memorable first. This happens during the song’s bridge, which shifts into a minor chord progression—the “sad-sounding” chords and melodies. I feel the music pull at my chest a bit; I sense a shift in the weight of the vibration. It makes sense the baby would feel that too. The baby just doesn’t have the ability to hide that reaction the way my calloused, 37-year-old, jaded heart usually can.
This is a great example of the innocence of early life shining through. A reminder to pay attention to the wonder that surrounds us. The wonder and whimsy we often overlook because of the stresses we, as humans, have placed on ourselves and others around us. The social contracts that bind us to a life of going to work to be able to pay the bills, and to worry almost endlessly about things that didn’t necessarily exist before us. We, maybe more than ever, need to take time to soak in the magic that surrounds us, whether it be a red leaf drifting down from a molting tree in autumn, or a grandmother singing a schmaltzy love song to a baby.