Patients who heard their own favourite music while a needle went into their arm reported less pain than patients who heard nothing, a study of 204 people at University Hospital Zurich has found.
Relaxation music, the slow, quiet kind played in spas, made no measurable difference at all. The results were published in Frontiers in Pain Research, and the journal publicised them on 9 October 2026.
Four groups and one needle
The researchers recruited outpatients booked for a non-emergency MRI of the brain, spine, or head and neck that needed a contrast dye, which goes in through an intravenous cannula. The study ran from October 2024 to June 2025.
The 204 patients who finished were aged 17 to 83, and 107 of them were women.
One group heard the first movement of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, KV 448, played by Alfred Brendel and Walter Klien. Another heard a relaxation track, “Source of the I Am” by Peter Uwe Piotter. A third named a favourite artist or song, and the fourth heard no music.
The Mozart piece was there for a reason: an earlier study cited in the paper found it eased cannula pain in kidney dialysis patients, who are punctured again and again.
The music came through speakers and was already playing when patients walked into the MRI room. Nobody was given a sedative beforehand.
Each patient rated their pain from 0 to 10 before the needle, then immediately after it, after 30 seconds and after two minutes.
Favourite songs beat silence
The favourite music group scored significantly lower than the no-music group at 30 seconds and at two minutes. In the 71 patients who were already in pain before the needle, favourite music also lowered pain at the moment of insertion.
Mozart helped only those patients with existing pain, and only at the two-minute mark. Relaxation music and silence did not change pain scores.
“Relaxation music is usually characterized by a slow speed and low volume, and does not show noticeable dynamics,” senior author Dr Meritxell Garcia Alzamora said in a Frontiers statement. “These characteristics may have contributed to the patients disregarding relaxation music.”
The paper lists every favourite, and only two songs were picked twice: Adele’s “Someone Like You” and Robert Miles’ “Children,” the 1995 dream-trance hit that topped charts around the world.
The rest ran from AC/DC’s “Hells Bells” and Lionel Richie’s “Hello” to Michael Jackson’s “Bad” and “Smooth Criminal,” Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms” and Phil Collins’ “Another Day in Paradise.” Trance, trip hop and Fred again’s “Delilah” were in there too.
Many of those picks are decades old. Songs from our teens and early twenties stay emotionally strong for life, a pattern psychologists call the reminiscence bump, and sound can change the body in ways listeners do not notice, as a recent concert study on inaudible bass showed. More music science sits in our retro culture section.
The limits the authors admit
Patients were assigned to groups in the order their scans were booked, so the authors call it a non-randomised study.
The needle pain was brief, and the technician who inserted the cannula also asked for the pain scores. “The mere presence of a person talking to you may be perceived as calming and distracting,” lead author Dr Andrei-Cristinel Dragnea said. All four groups had the same setup, so the team says that factor should not be over-read.
“In view of our results we will increase the application of music in venous punctures performed for radiological procedures, especially in anxious or claustrophobic patients,” Garcia Alzamora said.
Next, Dragnea says, music should be tested on procedures that hurt more and last longer than a needle stick.
Lead photo: Polina Tankilevitch / Pexels, Pexels License