The general consensus in popular lore is that when you play some music, you are likely to feel more creative. Research students at the Lancaster University decided to put this popular belief to test. The psychologists devised an experiment where three types of musical backgrounds were provided to the participants of the study who were involved in a problem solving exercise.

The first was background music with foreign (unfamiliar) lyrics. The second was instrumental music without any lyrics. The third was popular music with familiar lyrics. The participants of the scientific research experiment were given verbal tasks to perform as they listened to one of the three types of music playing in the background. If popular theory held true, the ones who were listening to music they identified with, should have been very creative and solved the problems quickly.

That did not seem to happen when the results of the study were collected. Dr Neil McLatchie of Lancaster University said that they found strong evidence of impaired performance when playing background music in comparison to quiet background conditions. The inference was that the music disrupted the verbal working memory and caused the participants to perform their assigned tasks poorly.