100 Words to Describe Music (2024)

Music is one of humanity’s greatest artforms, and it’s an incredibly deep and complex one. This article will teach you how to describe music by using different words to describe a song, whether you’re talking about a song in your headphones, or the sounds in concerts.

There are plenty of great words in the English language that you can use in order to describe music in one word. Because there’s such an intense variety of different terms that could be used to describe music, we’ve compiled only 100 words that you can use for this purpose.

Below the list of 100 words to describe music, you will find that we have added our top picks for you to choose from the list, alongside explanations of why we believe that those are the best picks from the list. Here are the words:

• Acoustic
• Atonal
• Bass
• Bold
• Breathtaking
• Captivating
• Childish
• Classic
• Clever
• Common
• Complex
• Connected
• Country
• Deep
• Dense
• Discordant
• Downbeat
• Electric
• Elegant
• Emo
• Emotional
• Enigmatic
• Explosive
• Fantastic
• Fast
• Foreign
• Funky
• Generational
• Goofy
• Happy
• Hardcore
• Harmonic
• Heart-wrenching
• Heartfelt
• Hypnotic
• Impressive
• Incredible
• Jazzy
• Layered
• Lilting
• Local
• Loud
• Masterful
• Mature
• Maximalistic
• Melancholic
• Mellow
• Melodic
• Melodious
• Minimalistic
• Modal
• Musical
• Normal
• Nostalgic
• Orchestral
• Outstanding
• Overrated
• Overwhelming
• Philharmonic
• Pizzicato
• Playful
• Poetic
• Poetry
• Powerful
• Quiet
• Quirky
• Rare
• Refined
• Relaxing
• Rhythmic
• Rich
• Romantic
• Rural
• Sad
• Sensual
• Shallow
• Shrill
• Silly
• Simple
• Slow
• Soft
• Sophisticated
• Special
• Standard
• Stellar
• Strange
• Strong
• Suave
• Sweet
• Textured
• Tragic
• Tuneful
• Underrated
• Underwhelming
• Unique
• Upbeat
• Uplifting
• Urban
• Weird
• Wild

Words to Describe How Music Makes You Feel

There are plenty of incredibly useful words that you can use in order to describe the way that music makes you feel. For example, you could use “bold”, “captivating”, “deep” and “elegant” to describe different things in music.

If you are particularly struck by the confidence of a song, and how sure of itself it seems, you can easily use “bold” to refer to it.

Whenever the performance of an artist absolutely captures your heart and soul, that’s the right situation in which to use “captivating” as a description.

When a song makes you feel things that you hadn’t in a very long time via a combination of music and lyrics that are more than they seem, you should describe it as “deep”.

If you’re listening to a song that makes you feel like you should be at a very high-class party with a lot of expensive things, that song should be described as “elegant”.

Here are some more words to describe how music makes you feel:

• Bold
• Captivating
• Deep
• Elegant
• Emo
• Generational
• Happy
• Heartfelt
• Hypnotic
• Impressive

Words to Describe Music Mood

If you want to describe the specific mood of a song, there are plenty of great words that will get you there. For example, you can use “childish”, “clever”, “enigmatic” and “funky” to describe the mood of songs.

If a song deals with subject matters that are appropriate for very young people, and it uses lots of repetitive motifs that are very accessible, you can refer to it as “childish”.

Whenever you listen to a song that has a lot of very complex and impressive rhymes, then describing that song as “clever” would be accurate, since it has very smart writing.

If the song you’re listening to is strange and you can’t easily discern the meaning of its lyrics, then describing that song as “enigmatic” is only reasonable, since it’s a mysterious tune.

Whenever a song has a very upbeat, brass-heavy mood that makes you want to get up and dance, referring to the song as “funky” is the best way to describe it.

Here are some more words you can use to describe music mood:

• Childish
• Clever
• Enigmatic
• Funky
• Goofy
• Heart-wrenching
• Heartfelt
• Loud
• Mature
• Melancholic

Words to Describe Beautiful Music

If you want to describe tunes and songs that are incredibly beautiful, don’t worry: There are plenty of appropriate words you can use for this. Some of them are “breathtaking”, “dense”, “emotional” and “fast”.

Whenever a song is so absolutely gorgeous in its construction that it takes your breath away, you should describe that song as being “breathtaking”.

If a song is packed with meaning and layers of significance and different melodies, then describing that beautiful tune as “dense” is only fitting.

Beautiful music is often as gorgeous as it is because of the emotions that it raises in people, and therefore should be described as “emotional”.

It’s a very common phenomenon where beautiful music feels like it’s over in a second, partially because it’s so incredible that the moment passes by, which means it should be described as “fast”.

Here are more words to describe beautiful music:

• Breathtaking
• Dense
• Emotional
• Fast
• Foreign
• Hardcore
• Harmonic
• Lilting
• Maximalistic
• Mellow

Words to Describe Happy Music

If you want to properly describe happy music, there are a lot of words in the English language that will help you properly convey what it’s like. Some of these words are “complex”, “electric”, “jazzy” and “minimalistic”.

Happy music is often really complicated in terms of its construction, which means that it ought to be described as “complex”.

There are plenty of happy songs that get its main beat from the sweet tunes of the electric guitar, which means its music that should be described as “electric” itself.

The enjoyable tunes of jazz can be found in plenty of happy music, and those songs should be described as “jazzy” because of it.

A happy song can often be really simple in its construction, and whenever this happens you should refer to it as being “minimalistic”.

Here are more words to describe happy music:

• Complex
• Electric
• Jazzy
• Minimalistic
• Orchestral
• Outstanding
• Overwhelming
• Poetic
• Powerful
• Quiet