Problematic Music Listening

There has been disproportionate interest in the relationship between music listening and problematic behaviours. We are using the term problematic as an extension of North and Hargreaves’ (North and Hargreaves 2006) careful examination of the idea of ‘problem music’. They used the term to provide an alternative to ‘genres’ as a way of grouping music types that have been connected to problem behaviours such as women and sexuality, racial issues, violence, delinquency and criminality, self-harm and suicide (North and Hargreaves 2008). They carefully distinguished between correlation and causation studies (through experimental research) and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support the proposal that exposure to problem music will cause problem behaviours. We will critically review the correlation studies examining facets of our identities, the types of music we like and problem behaviours, echoing other scholars who have queried whether there are elements of unconscious racism and classism at play in this approach. In addition, we will extend the idea of problematic music listening to examine a popular stream of recent research investigating both unhelpful and sad music listening.