A Force from the Beginning: Wellbeing in the Affective Intensities of Pop Music

Abstract

The health impact of music is an emerging interest of research, although few studies have attempted to understand what it might be specifically about popular music that momentarily lifts people and gives them an immediate sense of wellbeing. This paper proposes some basic ideas in this area, using Daft Punk’s Get Lucky to explore how such experiences might be facilitated from an artistic and production standpoint. Features the song and its performance scenarios are related to Deleuzian ideas on affect. It is suggested that the physical characteristics of musical sound contribute an important auditory ingredient to affective intensities; mobile energies emerging from force encounters within assemblages of humans and non-humans. These intensities might be experienced as ‘feeling states’; somatically registered vibes and passions that flow through songs, environments and listeners alike. Through the registering of lyrical and other meanings, these feeling states might then slide into consciously known attitudes and emotions.