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Feeling stressed? "Take Me Home, Country Roads", "Nothing Else Matters" or "Baby One More Time" might calm you down again. Psychologist and music scientist Krisna Adiasto discovered that music genre doesn't seem to play a role in the songs we choose to recover from stress, but the songs that work do have shared characteristics.

Music and emotions are inextricably linked to one another. Music's ability to evoke emotion in listeners, is one of the reasons why people turn to music to improve their mood or express what they are feeling. Even though music is able to console, little systematic research has considered how music can offer consolation.

What is a hit song made up of? And why are some songs much easier to remember than others? Musicologists Ashley Burgoyne and Henkjan Honing investigated this by using music from the Eurovision Song Contest. In the recently launched online experiment Hooked on Music , participants listen to songs from the Eurovision Song Contest throughout the years.