The new John Lewis Christmas advert has already started making people cry into their tea.
And no, it’s not just the storyline.
It’s the music.
They chose Where Love Lives by Alison Limerick - a 90s dance classic that landed in the UK during a time of club culture, connection, sweat, and that rare feeling of being understood in a room full of strangers.
And as soon as that first vocal hits, the comments flood in:
“Oh my god… I forgot how much I loved this song, this took me back instantly.”
“Yep. I’m 19 again.”
You know the feeling.
That sudden gut-punch of memory you weren’t expecting.
And that reaction tells us something sound designers already know - even if the rest of the industry sometimes forgets.
Mute the advert and the story still works.
But the feeling disappears.
Sound is what carries emotion.
It’s what pulls memory forward.
It’s what makes nostalgia feel physical instead of conceptual.
A single chord.
A synth swell.
That breath before the drop.
And your brain goes:
“I know this place. I’ve been here before.”
No visual cue works as fast or as deep as sound does.
Which is wild, considering how often sound is the thing squeezed into the last 10% of the schedule, handed off with a “sorry, we ran out of time”.
And yet, this is the power editors, sound designers, and filmmakers are holding every day.
This isn’t romantic language. It’s biology.
Sound is processed in the amygdala and hippocampus, aka the emotional and memory centres of the brain.
So when you hear Where Love Lives, you’re not just hearing music.
You’re remembering:
No other sense gets there that quickly.
You don’t think your way into those memories.
You’re just suddenly inside them.
It means sound is never an afterthought, even when the workflow treats it like one.
It’s not a “we’ll fix it later”.
Not a “just grab something free”.
Not “throw some ambience under it so it feels finished”.
Sound is the emotional engine.
And if you’re a video editor, your leverage increases massively when you stop treating sound like admin, and start treating it like performance.
Because the moment sound starts reacting to picture, instead of just sitting underneath it, everything changes.
This is exactly why Krotos Studio exists.
Not to be another library you scroll through at 1am.
Not to give you 10,000 WAVs and call it “choice”.
But to let you perform sound — footsteps, ambiences, whooshes, textures — directly to picture, in real time.
Because emotional sound doesn’t come from searching.
It comes from:
Just like music does.
If you’re cutting films, TikToks, documentaries, game cutscenes, or client work - remember this:
Sound is your fastest emotional shortcut.
And when you get it right, your work doesn’t just look good.
It hits.
The way Where Love Lives hits.
Every single time.
If you want to try performing sound instead of searching for it, Krotos Studio lets you:
No heavy learning curve.
No library chaos.
Just emotion → sound → done.
Learn more about Krotos Studio Pro and Krotos Studio Max, and make your sound design as memorable as the moments it supports.