Editorial
The Science Behind Why Music Can Make Us Cry
The science behind why music can make us cry during a DJ set and trigger such a strong emotional response
There are few things stranger at a festival than realizing you are crying during a song while still having one of the best moments of your night, especially when nothing about the moment feels sad. It can happen when a familiar melody brings back a person, a certain year or a part of your life, or when hearing a track live gives new weight to music you have already carried with you for years. In dance music, songs such as Avicii’s Waiting for Love, Swedish House Mafia’s Don’t You Worry Child and Porter Robinson’s Language can take on that kind of personal meaning, which helps explain why the same song can affect one listener far more deeply than another. Crying in those moments is not always tied to sadness either, as happiness, nostalgia, relief and emotional intensity can all be part of the same response. A 2022 study published in Cognition examined tears and chills as peak emotional responses to music, offering useful scientific context for why certain songs can become powerful enough to bring someone to tears even when the experience itself is a happy one.
How Harmony, Lyrics and Mixed Emotions Can Bring Us to Tears
A 2022 study published in Cognition examined 186 pieces of music that participants associated with tears, chills or neither response, then compared the musical and lyrical characteristics connected to each reaction. Tears showed a stronger relationship with harmony, while chills were more closely linked to rhythmic uncertainty. The researchers also found connections between tears, major chords, feelings of happiness and lyrics about sad farewells, which is important because it shows that crying during music is not simply a response to sadness. A listener can be enjoying the melody, feeling emotionally connected to the harmony and responding to lyrics about loss or separation at the same time, creating a reaction that is more layered than one emotion on its own.
For dance music, that helps explain why certain tracks can feel euphoric and deeply emotional at the same time without those reactions contradicting each other. The instrumental may feel uplifting, while the vocal carries themes of heartbreak, distance or grief, and the listener may also bring their own memories into the experience. That means the same song can affect two people very differently, even when they are hearing it in the same DJ set. One person may react to the lyrics, another to the harmony, while someone else may associate the track with a specific person, festival or period of their life. The study does not suggest that one musical feature automatically causes tears, but it does show why crying can happen when several emotional cues come together strongly enough to produce a physical response.
Why Certain EDM Songs and Live Moments Can Become So Personal
As a song becomes part of different experiences over time, hearing it again can bring back far more than the moment in which it is playing. Research on music-evoked autobiographical memory has shown that familiar music can act as a strong cue for personal memories, which helps explain why someone may remember not only a festival set but also who they were with, what was happening in their life and how they felt when they first heard a particular track. Those associations can keep developing long after the original experience, so a song connected with a summer, friendship or first festival may later carry memories of relationships, loss or major changes as well. By the time it appears in another DJ set years later, the emotional response can involve several different periods of the listener’s life at once.
That change in meaning can be seen clearly through Avicii’s music, which many listeners first knew through his own releases and festival performances before hearing the same songs in a very different context after his death. At the Avicii Tribute Concert in Stockholm in 2019, thousands of people gathered in his hometown while singers and musicians who had worked with him returned to perform his music live, including songs such as Wake Me Up and Without You. For someone who already associated Levels, Wake Me Up or Without You with an earlier part of their life, hearing those songs in a concert created specifically to remember Avicii could bring the original memories back while adding grief, nostalgia and remembrance to music that once carried a different meaning.
A similar connection can develop when a festival performance gives familiar music a new context, even when grief is not involved. During Tiësto’s Tomorrowland 2024 Mainstage set, he played a mashup of Porter Robinson’s Language with Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, bringing together two songs many listeners already knew and associated with different memories. When Viva La Vida was introduced into Language, people across the audience could be seen singing, embracing and becoming emotional, turning the performance itself into a new memory attached to both songs. Moments like this show how a track can gain another layer of meaning through where it is heard, who someone experiences it with and what is happening around them, which helps explain why hearing familiar music live can sometimes become emotional enough to bring someone to tears.
For some listeners, crying during a DJ set can come from far more than whether a song sounds sad, especially once that music becomes connected to memories, people and different periods of someone’s life. The reaction can develop through the music itself, the memories attached to it and the meaning a track has gained over years of being replayed, heard live or connected to a particular person or period of life. Research into music-induced tears supports the idea that harmony, lyrics and mixed emotions can all contribute to that response, while autobiographical memory helps explain why the same song can affect someone very differently over time. By the time a familiar track returns in a festival set, the listener may be responding not only to what they are hearing in that moment, but also to everything that song has come to represent.
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What started as grassroots, techno-driven warehouse parties has officially exploded into the largest techno festival the city has ever hosted.
Over Labor Day weekend on September 4th & 5th, local organizers Twisted Lines debuted Twisted Festival at Atlanta Utility Works. The result was an unapologetic, high-energy atmosphere that marked a turning point for Atlanta’s underground music scene.
The Atmosphere & Stages: Industrial Architecture Meets Raw Energy
Historic masonry and sprawling ironwork set the tone immediately. Atlanta Utility Works provided an ideal industrial playground for the event. Overall, accommodating three distinct environments designed to give dancers room to move freely throughout the venue.
The Machinery: Enclosed within towering factory walls, this stage delivered the unfiltered, driving industrial grit techno was built upon.
The Ruins: Set inside the open-air foundry framework. This space paired weathered brick structures with precision laser projection as the backdrop.
The Industrial Forest: Tucked away behind the warehouse, this outdoor area combined strobes and organic canopy cover, creating a hypnotic open-air space.
Beyond the architecture, the crowd culture immediately stood out. The dancefloors felt genuinely welcoming, safe, and community-focused, prioritizing mutual respect and a shared love for heavy rhythms over club pretension.
Heavyweight Sound & Relentless Selectors
A proper techno gathering lives and dies by low-end fidelity. Twisted Lines brought in a heavyweight Funktion-One sound system, delivering chest-rattling bass without sacrificing midrange clarity. Acoustic bleed across the three stages was virtually nonexistent, and the audio stayed locked in without a single outage over both nights.
That acoustic power backed a stellar international and domestic roster featuring artists such as Kobosil, Onlynumbers, Ueberrest, EMILIJA, Fenrick, BAUGRUPPE90, and Selective Response. The curation bridged relentless techno, hard grooves, and acid textures. This kept the energy moving from early evening through the late night.
Logistics & Transit
Navigating logistics can make or break an urban event, but access remained straightforward throughout the weekend.
Location & Rideshare: Situated in East Point, the venue sits roughly 10–15 minutes from Atlanta’s International Airport. Rideshare fares generally fluctuated between $5 and $25 depending on departure timing and surge pricing.
Accommodations & Walkability: With multiple hotels located within a 5-minute drive, transit was minimal. The surrounding area also proved easy to navigate on foot, making for a manageable 20- to 30-minute walk (around one mile) to nearby lodging.
On-Site Flow: Bar queues moved quickly, water stations were easily accessible, and entry lines stayed organized even during peak hours.
What’s Ahead for 2027
Twisted Lines took an ambitious step forward with this debut. They turned underground passion into an expansive, community-centered festival format. The organizers have already confirmed that the festival will return next year, with word spreading that the experience could expand across a full three-day weekend. If this first edition proved anything, it’s that Atlanta’s appetite for underground techno is not just thriving–it’s shaping the future of regional electronic music events.
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Amsterdam Dance Event News
ADE Insider’s Guide: How to Make the Most of Your Amsterdam Dance Event Experience (Like a Pro)
Amsterdam Dance Event turns an entire city into your festival grounds for five days straight. In 2026, that means October 21–25.
Amsterdam Dance Event turns an entire city into your festival grounds for five days straight, and in 2026 that’s October 21 to 25. If you’ve never done it before, the scale is genuinely disorienting: 300+ venues, thousands of artists, and more good decisions available to you than there are hours to make them in. Longtime attendees, including those who’ve covered the event as media, tend to land on the same short list of things that actually change how you move through the week. Here’s what most first-timers only learn the hard way.
1. Pick the most strategic accommodations you can
This is the decision that quietly shapes your whole week, so sort it before anything else. The downtown core is where most of the action lives, which also makes it the most expensive place to sleep. The smart move is staying just outside it, along a tram or metro line. This way, you can hop into town whenever you need and get back out just as easily.
Hostels are a real option here, not just a budget compromise. ADE fills them with people doing exactly what you’re doing. This makes them genuinely good for meeting people, and a private room at a hostel is often cheaper than a hotel room. So, you still get your own space. Flying Pig and ClinkNOORD are two of the top picks. Both are reliable and both are well connected to the rest of the city.
2. Organize and schedule every event you plan on attending
Before you land, start a running list of every event you actually want to hit. Drop the key ones into your phone calendar so you get reminders, then build a proper Google Sheet alongside it. For each event, track the name, the headliner or DJs playing, the venue address, and your guest list contact if you have one.
It feels like overkill in August. However, it saves you in October, when you’re standing outside a venue at midnight trying to remember which artist’s manager you were supposed to text.
3. Get on the guestlist, don’t count on the Pro Pass alone
Most people at ADE are running on a Pro Pass, and it earns its price since it gets you into most of the program. If you’re media, a press pass gives you a little more room than the Pro Pass. But here’s the catch either way: with that many pass holders trying to get into the same rooms, capacity limits turn into one in, one out. As a result, you can end up stuck outside a venue you had every right to be in.
The only real way around that is getting on a guest list, ideally from the event producer or, better yet, from the DJs playing. A spot on the list beats any pass in your pocket. Start reaching out before you land, not after.
4. Plan your routes like a tour manager
ADE is not centered on one festival ground. Venues are scattered across the entire city. Some of the best ones sit well outside the downtown core. If you actually want to catch every artist on your list, you need to map the distance between venues, not just the events themselves.
Amsterdam was not built for cars, so public transit is how you get around. The good news is the Pro Pass comes with a free transit pass through GVB, the city’s transit authority. Sign up for it the moment you get your Pro Pass. Next, look up every address ahead of time and build in more travel time than feels necessary. Trams and buses during ADE week get packed, sometimes with pop-up performances happening right on board. Therefore, treat extra time as part of the plan, not a backup.
5. Cut your list of events down to your top 3-4 per day
Here’s the reality: most of your favorite DJs will be in the city at the same time, and on any given day you could probably find six shows worth going to. Your body will not cooperate with that plan. Between sleep and the travel time between venues, something has to give.
What works best is picking three or four events a day to actually commit to, and leaving the rest of the day open. Decide those in advance. This way, you’re not making the call at 2am when you’re exhausted and everything sounds like a good idea.
6. Leave Room to Go With the Flow
Planning gets you most of the way there, but some of the best moments at ADE come from what you didn’t plan. This is a week built for networking, and you will meet people: someone who works at a label you love, someone on an artist’s team, an event producer whose parties you’ve always wanted into. They might invite you somewhere that was never on your list. Even so, it might turn out to be exactly where you needed to be that night.
This is another reason the Pro Pass is worth it over buying individual tickets: you’re not losing money by bailing on a plan. Hold your schedule loosely enough that you can actually say yes when the moment shows up.
7. Protect your sleep and add it to your schedule
Some nights run until 6am. Some daytime programming starts at 10am. If you don’t actively schedule sleep into your week, ADE will happily take it from you. Be honest with yourself when you’re building your calendar. And don’t skip the daytime side of it either: a lot of the talks and conferences are genuinely worth attending, which sometimes means sacrificing a party the night before so you’re actually present for them the next morning.
8. Bring a set of winter clothes, just in case
ADE lands in the third week of October, and Amsterdam weather at that point can go either way. Some years it stays mild, other years it turns flat-out winter cold. Pack a real jacket, a scarf, and a hat, even if you’re hoping you won’t need them. Between the lack of sleep, the cold rain, and running around the city all week, it’s remarkably easy to get sick, and being underdressed is the fastest way there.
9. Eat smart
Amsterdam has excellent food and no shortage of ways to overspend on it. Grocery stores are everywhere, so grab something premade and cheap for lunch, a sandwich, a wrap, a bowl, and save your real budget for dinner. When you do eat out, noodles and shawarma or doner are consistently the best value you’ll find. Albert Cuyp Market is a good one-stop option for exactly that, a dense strip of stalls where you can eat well without spending much.
10. Network the Right Way: Get the WhatsApp
When you meet someone worth staying in touch with, go straight for their WhatsApp. Don’t bother asking for Instagram or email in the moment, both tend to get buried and ignored. Once you’ve had an actual conversation on WhatsApp, Instagram and email naturally follow from there. WhatsApp is where people actually talk, email is where business gets done once the relationship exists, and Instagram is where you stay loosely in touch after. If you’re serious about turning ADE contacts into real connections, WhatsApp first is the move.
ADE rewards people who plan and people who stay loose in equal measure. Get the logistics right, then let the week surprise you.
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The science behind why dancing to EDM can feel therapeutic and support emotional regulation, movement and social connection
Have you ever wondered why people say “EDM is therapy” or “raving is therapy” after spending hours dancing at a festival or club? For many people, it is not just about enjoying the music, but about the way repeated movement, familiar tracks and dancing alongside other people can leave them feeling calmer, more connected or mentally lighter afterwards. Those descriptions are usually casual, but they point to something researchers have increasingly been studying through the relationship between music, movement and emotional regulation. Recent work has examined how physical responses to music can affect psychological wellbeing, while studies involving dance music attendees have looked more closely at what happens when movement and shared emotion come together on the dancefloor. A 2025 study involving 612 dance music event attendees found that a stronger desire to dance was associated with greater embodied pleasure, which was closely linked with emotional synchrony and social connection. Alongside emerging research into conscious dance and trauma recovery, those findings offer a scientific basis for examining why dancing to EDM can feel therapeutic, and where the comparison between raving and therapy actually holds up.
Why Dancing to EDM Can Help the Body Process Stress
A 2026 study published in Psychological Trauma examined a conscious dance and expressive arts intervention called Rhythms of Resilience among adults with complex trauma histories. The program combined mindful movement to music with expressive arts across six weekly group sessions, with researchers looking at whether the intervention could support self-regulation and social connectedness. Half of the participants who completed the program reported clinically significant reductions in post-traumatic symptoms, while the group also showed increases in compassion and social engagement. The study did not find measurable changes in emotion regulation itself, which is important because it limits how far the findings can be taken. What it does suggest is that structured movement to music may support some of the psychological and social processes linked with recovery, particularly when movement is combined with reflection and group participation. That makes it relevant to the discussion around dancing to EDM, where repeated movement, music and shared participation are already central parts of the experience.
In a dance music setting, the significance may lie in how little conscious effort that movement requires once someone is fully engaged with the music. Instead of deliberately trying to regulate an emotion, attention can shift toward the beat, the physical repetition and what is happening in the present moment, which may temporarily reduce the amount of focus given to stress or intrusive thoughts. That could help explain why people often describe long periods of dancing to EDM as mentally clearing or releasing, even when they struggle to explain exactly why afterwards. The effect is also likely to vary from person to person, since music preference, comfort in the setting and personal associations with certain tracks can all influence how someone responds. In that sense, the therapeutic feeling may come less from EDM itself and more from what sustained movement to personally meaningful music allows the mind and body to do for a period of time
From Personal Recovery to Collective Release Through Dance
Dancing can take on a different role when the music connects with something an artist or audience is already trying to work through, which is why certain performances can mean far more than simply seeing a DJ play. Skrillex’s five-hour Red Rocks show in 2023 is one example, taking place after he had spoken openly about the death of his mother, depression and problems with alcohol during a difficult period in his life. With no special guests and five hours spanning different parts of his career, the night gave Skrillex and the crowd hours to dance, sing and react together, while he later described it as one of the best nights of his life.
A different kind of return came with Hardwell at Ultra Music Festival in 2022, four years after he stepped away from an intense touring schedule and later spoke about the importance of taking time away when an artist begins to feel burnt out. Reflecting on that period, Hardwell said it was crucial to step back when needed, while his return to Ultra placed him in front of a major festival crowd again with an entirely new body of music. He admitted that he had no idea how the audience would respond to a set consisting entirely of unreleased material, making their reaction particularly meaningful after several years away from touring.
The role of movement becomes more obvious when thousands of people physically participate in the same moment. During Defqon.1’s Power Hour in 2023, around 65,000 attendees jumped from side to side together during its well-known Left-Right crowd movement, turning thousands of separate reactions to the music into one coordinated action across the festival. The moment works differently from an artist returning after a difficult period, but it shows another side of why dancing can become significant, particularly when the physical response is shared by almost everyone around you.
At ODESZA’s final The Last Goodbye tour shows at The Gorge in 2024, dancing was accompanied by years of memories connected to the music, with the ECHOES installation featuring emotional voice messages from attendees about what ODESZA had meant to them. Thousands of people encountered those messages while attending the three closing shows, bringing personal memories into an event that was already marking the end of a long-running tour. Moments like these help explain why dancing can feel therapeutic under very different circumstances, whether movement becomes part of getting through a difficult period, returning to something after needing time away or experiencing an emotional response alongside thousands of other people.
For many people, the therapeutic feeling associated with dancing to EDM may come from more than simply enjoying the music or taking a break from everyday stress. The response can develop through repeated movement, the physical focus of dancing, the meaning attached to certain tracks and the experience of moving alongside other people for long periods of time. Research into conscious dance and dance music events supports the idea that movement, social connection and shared emotional responses can all contribute to how someone feels during and after the experience, while real festival and performance moments show how differently that can play out depending on the person and the context. By the time someone leaves a club or festival after hours of dancing, the change they notice may not come from one single part of the night, but from the way music, movement, memory and connection have worked together across the whole experience.
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