Oh boy, one way to open a can of worms is to start that old argument – men, women and their differences; who does what and are the differences marked. An article recently caught my attention concerning males, females and their emotional responses to music in all it’s forms. It certainly attracted some interesting as well as rather heated comments, even a few feminists waded in and then unfortunately an interesting discussion turned into the tired old ‘men vs women’ thing.

But it is a interesting one to ponder. One suggestion was that women focus on the lyrics of a song whereas men tend to listen only to the tune; but what about music where there are no lyrics? How do you compare in that regard? It was also suggested that women will cry more easily at a sad song, or moving piece of music, than a man will.

Well, I can certainly vouch for the fact that men do feel exactly the same emotions as us girls; my own late father was a musician and I well recall him sitting listening to the Elgar violin concerto and he had tears just streaming down his face. He was the same whenever he listened to that old crooner Vic Damone sing certain songs, or Perry Como. I am the same way and I do not put it down to anything in the genes.

I suspect it all comes down to what strikes a chord in a person – listening with the ear alone is one thing and we all do that; but some people, male and female, tend to listen more with the heart – and that is on a completely different level.