A while back I wrote a post on how a sound can instantly bring you back to a time gone by. It can evoke a feeling in much the same way as a distinctive smell can.

The other day, I was watching the Champions League footie on the television and they were having some sound issues. The noise cancelling function of the commentators mike wasn’t working, so it was picking up crowd white noise as well.

The weird thing was this: it sounded just like the football commentaries of world cup games in the 60’s and 70’s. I was spirited back to a time of David Coleman or Kenneth Wolstenholme and those legendary voices that sounded slightly dislocated, strangled almost.

I guess that’s why music is so good at evoking a feeling or a certain period in our lives. It makes ‘guess the year’ on the radio so much more penetrable.

We’re used to hearing music on marketing videos. Perhaps it is the next great ploy to be exploited via the browser and web sites…