This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You

Susan Rogers, a neuroscientist who formerly worked as Prince’s recording engineer, explains how individual listeners process music through seven distinct dimensions. She identifies these elements as melody, lyrics, rhythm, timbre, texture, form, and record production. The text describes how our brains act as "record players" that filtered every song through a "listener profile" based on personal biology and life experience. Rogers uses her background in the studio and the laboratory to show how specific auditory features trigger dopamine releases or emotional memories, explaining why a particular track can feel like a physical necessity to one person while others find it uninteresting.

This book serves music fans and amateur musicians who want to understand their own aesthetic taste. Readers gain a functional vocabulary for explaining why they gravitate toward certain genres or sonic environments. By using the included listening exercises, a reader learns to isolate specific parts of a song, such as the spatial arrangement of instruments or the grit of a vocal performance. The audience walks away with a scientific framework for self-discovery through their record collections.