Music Isn’t Just Entertainment

Walk into any shop, scroll through your socials, or switch on the radio, and you’ll find music acting like background wallpaper to modern life — a vibe, a filler, a branding tool. It entertains, sure. It sells, yes. It even scores our memories. But what if we told you that the thing we’ve shoved into the entertainment basket might actually belong in the medicine cabinet?

For decades, Western culture has comfortably boxed music into the category of fun, diversion, and talent-based showbiz. Music is for the stage, the party, the workout playlist. If you’re “into it,” great — but that’s a lifestyle choice, right? This dominant narrative has been baked into every corner of how we program the arts, fund creative industries, and design health systems. Music is the reward, not the remedy. It’s what we turn to after the work is done — not as the work itself.

As the Creative Women’s Association, we’ve been tuning into a different frequency. Across the globe, leading researchers, creatives, and cultural health advocates are proving that music isn’t just a side dish to life — it’s part of the main course. From regulating the nervous system to improving emotional resilience, music has measurable impacts on human health, especially in women’s health and ageing.

Take the latest evidence from The European Journal of Public Health. A systematic review examined how music participation — both listening and making — affects adults over 40. The results weren’t just positive, they were transformative. Cognitive function? Improved. Quality of life? Enhanced. Mental health? Supported. This wasn’t some outlier therapy trial — this was evidence-based, peer-reviewed, public health data. You can read the study here, and we suggest you do.

We’re not saying you need to swap your blood pressure meds for a Fleetwood Mac box set (though we wouldn’t blame you). But it’s time we stop underestimating what a well-chosen chord or a collective song can do for the human body. Music moves lymph. Music triggers dopamine. Music rewires memory, grief, stress, and pain.

In this light, the dismissive tone we often hear around music in policy, education, or health feels not only outdated — but negligent. What if, instead of asking “is music entertainment or education?”, we asked “how are we integrating music into the frameworks that support human flourishing?” What if we trained community musicians like allied health workers? What if funding music was seen not as a luxury, but as a strategy?

As artists, health leaders, educators, and citizens, it’s time to reframe music as a serious tool in our wellbeing arsenal. We can still dance, laugh, cry, and blast it in the car — that’s the magic. But let’s also get clinical about it. Let’s bring the data into the conversation and shift the narrative. Because if we treat music only as entertainment, we’re ignoring half of what it’s here to do.