frisson: the feeling of being moved.

Whenever life gets overwhelming, I reach the point where I want to scream from deep inside, but it’s trapped. So I carry it quietly and hope it fades. It’s tough to find a distraction when I’m feeling helpless. But one thing that has helped drown out the noise many times in my life is music that hits in a way you can’t explain. It’s not the lyrics or the artist, it’s something about the sound itself. For a few minutes, you just feel alive again. Songs like that bring a kind of calm, a chance to take a deep breath and rationalize what’s going on.

There’s a strange thing that happens when a song hits just right. It’s called frisson, the scientific word for when music literally gives you chills. Sometimes it’s a chord change, a vocal tone, or a swell in the production, and suddenly you get that shiver down your arms. It’s your brain releasing dopamine, the same chemical behind joy and anticipation, because the sound surprised you in a way that felt emotionally safe.

Frisson is that mix of comfort and awe. The familiar progression that resolves just right, the layered sound that blooms for a second too long, the silence before everything kicks back in. It’s your brain saying, this means something, even if you can’t explain why.

For me, it’s not always the complex songs that do it. Sometimes it’s the simple ones, like House Tour by Sabrina Carpenter, or some of Shallou’s songs I used to play on repeat, the ones that made me feel okay. They’re not groundbreaking, but they feel human. Maybe that’s what frisson really is: the moment when sound reminds you that you’re alive enough to feel.

The first time I listened to House Tour, I wasn’t expecting anything. It’s a polished pop track with a catchy hook, something I’ve heard dozens of times before. But halfway through, something shifted. The song swelled, the production opened up, and I felt it, that familiar, almost forgotten wave of emotion that starts in your chest and moves outward.

House Tour isn’t trying to reinvent anything. Honestly, it’s kind of cheesy, but that’s what makes it work. Like much of Carpenter’s recent music, it’s aware of itself, confident, direct, built to sound good. But this track trades showiness for warmth. It doesn’t try to impress; it just feels good. The sound carries it, the soft percussion, the synth textures, the way the chorus lifts and stretches. It’s pop at its most sincere.

I wasn’t expecting it to hit me like that, mostly because I haven’t felt it in a long time. I’ve listened to thousands of songs, probably more than I can count, and over time I think my brain stopped reacting the same way. When you’ve absorbed that much music, it’s hard to find something that still feels new. You stop getting surprised.

But House Tour brought that back for a few seconds. It reminded me what it felt like to connect with a song on a level beyond thought, not because of what it said, but because of what it did. That’s what frisson does. It slips past all your reasoning and just makes you feel.

I’ve wondered why that reaction seems to happen less often as you get older. Maybe it’s because we’ve already felt it so many times that it takes more to break through. Or maybe life just gets louder, with responsibilities, routines and distractions, making it harder to let music in fully. When I was younger, I had the time and emotional space to immerse myself in albums. Now it feels like I’m always halfway between focus and fatigue.

But every once in a while, a song still gets through. And when it does, it reminds me that the ability to feel that rush hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s just buried under everything else. Maybe the trick isn’t finding more music. Perhaps it’s just slowing down enough to listen again.

Sometimes frisson is the closest thing to being in love without another person involved. That brief rush of warmth, the way the world feels lighter for a second, it’s the same kind of chemistry. Songs like What’s The Time Where You Are? by Troye Sivan carry that feeling. They make you feel seen, even if no one’s actually looking.

This isn’t about romance. It’s about openness. The way that song glows, with soft vocals, echoing synths, the pulse that feels like a heartbeat, it taps into something familiar and comforting. For a few seconds, the world feels gentler, like the space between you and everything else has closed a little.

Frisson at its best isn’t just sound, it’s connection. It reminds you that your capacity to feel deeply is still there, even when it is sometimes hidden. That could be why we continue to chase music that moves us. Not because we’re looking for something new, but because we’re looking for ourselves in it.