Person Facts About Music

Surgeons who listen to music during operations perform better than those who don't .

Evanston Township High School in Illinois played Justin Bieber's 'Baby' as a fundraiser between classes. Students had to pay to stop it. $1,000 was collected in 3 days.

Listening to music while working can boost mood and productivity, but the effect depends on the type of task and music—lyrics can interfere with reading or writing, while instrumental music often helps with repetitive tasks.

Singing exercises your heart, lungs, and releases endorphins which make you feel good.

Researchers have found that reading reduces stress by 68%, more than listening to music or taking a walk.

Listening to music activates the same dopamine reward system in the brain that responds to sex, food, and drugs.

Most people turn their music down in the car when finding a street sign to "see better".

The chills you sometimes feel when listening to music is called "musical frisson."

Jack White's mother couldn't find work, so Detroit's Masonic Temple hired her as an usher. Years later, the massive concert hall she once worked in faced foreclosure over unpaid taxes. White quietly paid off the entire debt himself, telling no one. The Temple's president later revealed who had saved it, renaming the theater in his honor. It still carries his name today.

Phil Collins fell in love with the Alamo at age 5, watching Disney's Davy Crockett on TV in London. The Genesis drummer spent decades secretly building the world's largest private collection of Alamo artifacts, more than 430 pieces worth tens of millions. In 2014 he gave every single one to Texas, for free.

In 1981 Chuck Leavell was an out-of-work piano player who planted pines on about 40 acres of his wife's Georgia pasture. Then the Rolling Stones called, and he has been their keyboardist and musical director ever since, studying forestry by mail on tour. In 1999 the American Tree Farm System named the couple National Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year. He still works those rows between tours.

Darryl "DMC" McDaniels of Run-DMC did not learn he was adopted until he was 35. He had spent his first months in foster care before being adopted. After learning the truth, DMC co-founded Camp Felix in 2006, a summer camp built just for foster kids. Twenty years later, it still gives kids canoe trips and campfires they might not otherwise get.

A secretary in Dallas kept making typing errors, so she started painting over them with white tempera paint. She offered the idea to IBM - they said no. She built Liquid Paper into a company doing $38 million a year. Gillette bought it for $47.5 million. Her son was in The Monkees.

Shaggy's growling singing voice wasn't natural - he built it mocking his Marine Corps drill instructors to make his platoon laugh. Sergeants started calling him forward to lead cadences. The growl stuck. He served four years as a cannon crewman and deployed to the Gulf War in 1991. "I got this voice by mocking drill instructors in the military."

Jelly Roll was locked up in Nashville's juvenile detention center as a teenager. He got through it with only a radio and headphones. Years later, he headlined a show at Bridgestone Arena. He used the proceeds to build a real recording studio inside that same facility. He called the launch Redemption Songs. Kids locked up there now write and record in the room that once held him.

For 16 seasons, a Yankees center fielder chased down fly balls and won four World Series rings. That was Bernie Williams, whose number 51 now hangs in Monument Park. He also earned a Latin Grammy nomination and, at 47, a Bachelor of Music degree. He has since performed with the New York Philharmonic. Every August, he still trades his glove for a guitar at a Hudson Valley winery.

Flea grew up playing trumpet in Los Angeles. He has said his public school's music department kept him out of trouble as a kid. By 2001, Los Angeles had gutted school arts funding, so Flea opened a free music school in Silver Lake. 25 years later, it is still running. It grants scholarships for free lessons and instruments to families who cannot pay. He never forgot what music did for him.