Music & context: is a song ever "just a song?"

This is a question I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. It’s come up in a few recent discussions, but in truth, it’s always running quietly in the background of my mind whenever I am curating for a client or project. It’s also something David Byrne explores beautifully in How Music Works; in fact, it’s arguably the premise of the entire book. Byrne proposes that music, from its earliest forms, was never created in a vacuum; it was always shaped by the environment it was made for. A cathedral, a dance hall, a tribal ceremony - each space, each social function, gave rise to a particular kind of sound. In other words, music doesn’t exist outside of context. Context is the condition that gives it meaning. Without it, music is just organized sound; or, as Byrne (and I) put it, math.

As a music curator, I live and work by this principle. Context changes everything. The same track can take on an entirely different emotional charge or meaning depending on where and how it’s heard. When I "take in" new music - a recent album release, for example - I’m not asking which tracks I personally like, I’m asking where they could possibly belong: which client, which space within that client's property, which time of day, which mood. Sometimes that means selecting a song I would never listen to for personal pleasure but that fits a specific environment perfectly. Conversely, a song I love might not serve any purpose in the contexts I’m curating for. Taste is irrelevant; context is everything.

This leads to the question of: can we ever have an “objective” opinion about a track without context? Unless we're having a black-and-white discussion about the mechanics of a song, and keeping opinion totally aside, I don’t think so. Even in personal listening, context is inescapable. Am I on a sunny lunchtime walk or listening as I try to hit inbox zero late at night? Am I listening through my high-end speakers, my over-ear headphones, or my tinny earbuds? Each of these layers - physical, emotional, technological - alters the experience in so many ways.

Recognizing and responding to those subtleties is the essence of my job. It’s also why I believe AI, no matter how sophisticated its algorithms, can’t rival human curation in the long term, without question. Context can’t be reduced to BPM, key, or other quantifiable data points. It’s cultural, sensory, temporal, and deeply human.

A track used in one setting can be a hidden gem - an easter egg, if you will, or pépite, as we say in France - and sound completely mainstream in another. The difference isn’t in the track itself; it’s in the frame we place around it. Context also extends to personal history: the emotional imprints of every song we’ve ever loved or hated. Every time we hear something new, we’re hearing it through the filter of everything that came before.

So when we’re asked to give an opinion about a track or an album, we’re never reacting to the music alone, rather, we’re reacting to its context: where we are, who we are, and the entire story of how we’ve experienced music up to that moment.

As a close-out, these are simply a few reflections from my corner of the music world - an ongoing attempt to make sense of how context gives meaning to sound. If you have your own perspective or experiences to share, feel free to drop me a line!