For the Columbia Road carol service in Bethnal Green, east London, the power of TikTok proved too much. After footage of December's first singalong went viral, thousands turned up to ding dong merrily, forcing organisers to scrap the events over fears for public safety. The cobbled street's Victorian charm has always drawn the crowds, but the carol service has become an extraordinary seasonal hit. The success mirrors the nation's newfound enthusiasm for group singing, a trend that follows the rise of the TV choirmaster Gareth Malone and the increasing popularity of rock choir and pop choir. What draws people to singing, and the benefits it brings, have been the subject of research for centuries. But only in the past few decades has the evidence come together on how and why singing improves health and wellbeing. This is a really burgeoning topic, said Daisy Fancourt, a professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London. And in recent years, there's been a real elucidation of the mechanisms. Singing has brought humans together, and driven social bonding, since the early history of the species. Over the course of human evolution, the activation of endorphins, which creates a sense of contentment and peace with the world, emerged as a primary means to bond large communities. It turns out that singing is an incredibly potent trigger. Singing is one of the mega-mechanisms we use for bonding, said Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford. Singing in the shower gives you a bit of an uplift, but when doing it communally, there's something about the synchrony of singing that creates this massive endorphin uplift.
In a 2015 study, Dunbar and his colleagues found that strangers who sang together for an hour emerged from the sessions with an unusually close bond. It was as if they'd known each other since primary school, he said. And that doesn't normally happen if you spen
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