Listening to your favorite EDM songs may help increase pain tolerance, reduce pain intensity and influence how the brain responds to physical pain.

Why can a song you already love make pain feel easier to handle? A 2025 crossover randomized controlled trial published in the European Journal of Pain examined music-induced analgesia in 84 participants listening to self-chosen music, researcher-selected classical music and a podcast while exposed to increasing electrical pain stimulation. The researchers found that self-chosen music increased pain endurance and reduced both pain intensity and pain unpleasantness compared with the podcast, regardless of the type of music participants selected. More importantly, the results suggest that choosing the music yourself may influence how you respond to pain.

Why Your Favorite Music Can Change How You Experience Pain

As participants moved through the three listening conditions, both self-chosen music and researcher-selected classical music increased the point at which they first detected pain compared with the podcast. Self-chosen music also significantly increased pain endurance and reduced pain intensity and pain unpleasantness compared with the control condition, while researcher-selected music did not produce the same significant results across those measures. With those effects remaining consistent across different music choices and socio-cultural backgrounds, personal preference becomes an important part of understanding why some music may help people manage pain more effectively.

The difference becomes clearer when the physical response to the music is considered alongside those pain results. Classical music produced stronger signs of parasympathetic activity, which is associated with the body’s resting and recovery response, while self-chosen music still produced significant improvements across several of the pain measures compared with the podcast. Physical relaxation therefore appears to explain only part of what researchers observed, with the listener’s own music choice adding another part to how music-induced analgesia may work.

Why Certain EDM Songs Become So Personal

When people keep hearing the same song over and over again, whether in a club, at a festival or on their own, they can start to associate it with certain memories and periods of their life. A track may bring back the people they were with, what they were going through at the time or a moment they still think about years later, especially when they have been listening to it for years. Those memories can make favorite music feel much more personal than something selected for them by somebody else.

Avicii’s “The Nights” came to be through Nicholas Furlong’s experiences with his father and the advice he gave him about going out into the world and pursuing what mattered to him, while Martin Garrix and Third Party’s “Carry You” was described by Oaks in relation to the people who helped her through difficult periods and could make her forget about pain for a moment. As people continue listening to songs like these, they can start connecting them with their own experiences of family, friendships, loss, support or a certain period of life that comes back whenever they hear the track.

When people hear songs like Zedd’s “Clarity” or Alesso’s “If I Lose Myself” over and over again, they can start to connect them with a relationship, a close friend, a festival or a certain period of their life. Those memories can make the song feel more familiar every time they hear it, which is important when looking at self-chosen music, pain perception and pain tolerance. Research into music-induced analgesia suggests that personal preference can affect how people respond to music during pain, especially when the song they choose already has memories and emotions attached to it.

With personal choice producing different pain-related results from simply listening to music selected by somebody else, there is still more to understand about why familiar songs can affect people the way they do. Years of listening, the memories connected to a track and the reason someone chooses that particular song may all be part of the wider relationship between self-chosen music and pain relief. As research in this area continues, favorite music could offer a clearer understanding of why the songs people already know and care about may help make physical pain easier to handle.