Pharrell has even said he would be lost without synesthesia, and that it's his only reference for understanding. Meaning they might hear a music note and see a color, smell something and hear a sound with it, or perhaps even see a certain word and taste a flavor at the same time.

Many other musicians - including household names like Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Kayne West, and Pharrell - are synesthetes. Jules Montague, a consultant neurologist at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust told NME that musical synesthetes have “this multimodal experience, so when they choose the choruses and bridges, they’re based on all of those connections we can’t see.”īelieve it or not, Lorde is far from the only musician to ever reveal the secret behind her work is synesthesia. Having synesthesia can actually be a major asset for musicians like Lorde, as it allows them to look at the bigger picture. “It’s about getting the actual thing to sound like what I’ve been seeing,” she said. The ultimate goal is to align everything from the rhythm to the emotion to match up to how she first saw it in her head. “From the moment I start something, I can see the finished song, even if it’s far-off and foggy,” she told the New York Times in a recent profile. Imagine listening to a few notes of a song and being able to picture how it's going to turn out, because that's what it's like for Lorde - the whole thing is very visual. Pretty cool, right? Well, we'd definitely say so, considering Lorde says it largely contributes to her music-making process.

In Lorde's case, she has sound-to-color synesthesia, which allows her to see specific colors when certain music notes are played. Love J-14? Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for fun, exclusive videos with your favorite stars.Put simply, people with synesthesia - which is as few as 1 in 2,000 people - have senses that blend together, meaning their perceptions of sight, smell, and so on could be very different from the average human's. Scroll through the gallery to discover all your favorite celebrities who experience synesthesia and how it affects their process of creating music! They all might “hear colors” in different ways, so it’s quite interesting to uncover each and every celebrity’s own experience with visualizing colors, textures or patterns through music. Stars like Billie Eilish, Alessia Cara, Lorde and more have all opened up about having synesthesia and how it actually can help them with their creative process. Think of it as “joint perception.” For some musicians, their experience with synesthesia consists of seeing colors in music.

But for people with condition, it’s totally normal! You see, those with synesthesia experience one sense (hearing, for example) simultaneously with an additional sense (such as sight). If you’ve never heard of synesthesia, you might be a little perplexed about the concept.

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