23.1: Introduction

In the first two decades of the 21st century, technological advances in personal listening devices sparked an explosion in the use of music by athletes. As a consequence, the influence of music on the athlete’s psyche has captured the interest of researchers and practitioners alike. Music has, of course, been widely used since ancient times for a broad variety of purposes: to soothe bawling infants, to rejuvenate senior citizens, to punctuate civil ceremonies, to send soldiers into the fray, and even as a form of therapy (Thaut, 2008). The well-known neuropsychologist, Daniel Levitin, wrote that music is unusual among human activities for both its ubiquity and its antiquity (Levitin, 2008).

Greek philosophers from the 5th century BC were widely known to “prescribe”music. The mode or key in which the music was written was thought to carry specific benefits. For example, Plato declared that the Dorian mode was conducive to steadfast endurance, whereas the Phrygian mode was considered appropriate for acts of peace and acquiescence. Mathematician par excellence Pythagoras is credited with discovering the 12-note chromatic scale—think of all of the notes from C to C on a piano. Most contemporary Western musicians and composers borrow from the Pythagorean system of tuning which is over 2500 years old.

The modern Olympic Games have served a seminal role in formalizing the link between music and sporting endeavor. Prominent composers such as Claude Debussy, John Williams, and Vangelis have been stirred by the Olympic ideals. Vangelis’s Chariots Of Fire stands as one of the defining compositions in fusing music with the notion of athletic prowess. The piece was popularized through association with the eponymous movie that depicts the story of two athletes who graced the 1924 Paris Olympics: Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian who ran for the glory of God, and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew who ran to combat prejudice.

Music has been integral to many Olympic events such as rhythmic gymnastics or figure skating, and the best-known artists of the day performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of each Olympiad. Among the most memorable performances was that of the late, great American songstress Whitney Houston with One Moment In Time, the anthem of the 1988 Seoul Olympics. But it is not only Olympiads that provide a vehicle for musical expression in the sporting realm.

Pay a visit to your local football, soccer, or rugby team on a weekend and you will hear chants that have been passed down through generations of fans. At Liverpool FC it’s the anthemic You’ll Never Walk Alone, which was popularized by Gerry and the Pacemakers in the 1960s. At Yale’s football stadium, it’s the distinctive long cheer taken from Aristophanes’ play The Frogs (c. 405 BC):

Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax, Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax,

O-op, O-op, parabalou, Yale, Yale, Yale,

Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, Yale!

Yale! Yale!

Oftentimes, musicians compose pieces for a particular team or even a special sporting occasion.One of the best-known examples to embrace both a team and a sporting occasion is Three Lions (It’s Coming Home), which became the hit song associated with the Euro ’96 Soccer Championships. The chorus belted out by the England faithful—“It’s coming home, it’s coming home, football’s coming home”—alluded to the fact that England, considered to be the spiritual home of soccer (known as “football” in the UK), had not won a major championship since the 1966 World Cup. The music lent a certain aura to Euro ’96 that bridged the gap between a mere soccer tournament and a stage for the nation’s hopes and dreams.

Athletes have made extensive use of music in order to fuel their performances and the music-and-sport literature reveals a common taxonomy that has been applied to the categorization of related interventions. The taxonomy is predicated on when such interventions are used: Pretask, in-task, and post-task. Pretask music generally serves a “psych-up” or “psych-down” function and can be used to prime athletes or engender an optimal level of activation either for training or competition. Sometimes pretask music is used to regulate a particular mindset without having either a psych-up or psych-down function. In terms of the psych-down function, music is a particularly potent tool in tempering precompetition anxiety. The celebrated British athlete, Dame Kelly Holmes, generated a great deal of media interest for her use of the soulful ballads of Alicia Keys at the 2004 Athens Olympics. The expectations of an entire nation can weigh rather heavily on an athlete’s shoulders but Holmes prevailed, and made history by winning two middle-distance golds (800 m and 1500 m).

The in-task application of music takes two forms—synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous music entails synchronization between an athlete’s movement patterns and the rhythmical qualities of a piece of music. In light of technological advances, Karageorghis (2020) delineated two distinct forms of synchronization: (a) Active synchronization entails a motor process in which an athlete or group of athletes/team consciously synchronize their movement rate with the rhythmical qualities of music; and (b) passive synchronization entails a process in which a digital interface adapts the tempo of music in real‐time or assigns a track at a tempo to match the movement rate of an athlete or group of athletes/team. Asynchronous music is akin to ambient music where there is no conscious or planned synchronization taking place. Such music can, however, be played loudly, while we tend to think of ambient music as just being part of the sonic background.

When used in-task, a central role of music is to lower perceived exertion and thereby increase the amount of work performed (i.e., to engender an ergogenic effect). It is notable that in-task music can temper the shift toward negative affect (i.e., displeasure) that is typically associated with more intense exercise (see Bird et al., 2019; Stork et al., 2019). Music also provides a rhythmic cue that serves a metronomic function in terms of regulating movement patterns; particularly when used in the synchronous mode (Grahn, 2012; Karageorghis et al., 2019).

Post-task music is proposed to aid recovery from competition or training (Terry & Karageorghis, 2011). This application has been dichotomized by Jones et al. (2017) into respite music (used in between high-intensity interval bouts) and recuperative music, which is used at the end of a training session or competition to guide the athlete back toward homeostasis. The respite function was recently redefined by Karageorghis (2020) in terms of active (movement based) and passive (static) forms of recovery. This, however, creates an interesting conceptual anomaly, as respite–active music is also a form of in-task application! Nonetheless, the goal of respite–active music is to facilitate recovery following high-intensity activity, such as circuit training or sprint-interval training.

This chapter will consider theoretical underpinnings for the application of music in sport, outline underlying neurophysiological mechanisms, provide a critical review of recent sport-related studies using the aforementioned taxonomy, and present a broad range of applications to hopefully inspire athletes and their coaches.