The Reason We Instinctively Love Music Is Because It Is Made of Time

The reason we instinctively love music, why our heads nod without permission, why our feet tap, why our mood shifts when the beat drops, is because music is beyond sound.

It’s time, measured and made audible.

Every note, every beat, every pause, even every silence is a timestamp. 

A declaration: “This moment matters.” 

An idea.

A dialogue.

Music is what happens when sound aligns with tempo, when rhythm fits into a grid of expectation and then plays with it just enough to keep us thrilled.

There’s a reason you know bad music when you hear it. 

You don’t have to study theory. 

Your body knows. 

Your brain flinches. 

It hears a beat land just a hair too soon, or too late, or a melody stretches too long and sags off the tempo, and it rebels.

Because music lives or dies by its relationship with time.

That’s why babies instinctively bounce to music. Good music.

And they cringe to bad music.

Before they can even comprehend a single word.

Music is time behaving beautifully, perfectly occupying its designated niche.

And we love it because it reminds us that time, which usually just slips through our fingers, can be held, structured, shaped, relished and understood, even if just for a moment, into something that makes perfect sense.