Soundtracking heartbreak: music as an elicitation tool for rapport and emotional access in qualitative interview

Purpose Qualitative researchers have long sought approaches that deepen rapport and facilitate access to participants' emotional worlds. This article advances music as an underutilized yet powerful elicitation tool in qualitative interviewing. Drawing on a study of queer college students' experiences of romantic heartbreak, participants were invited to submit songs representing their experiences prior to interviews. These songs served as relational entry points, narrative scaffolds and affective conduits. Design/methodology/approach This study employed a qualitative, semi-structured interview design grounded in interpretivist traditions, prioritizing participants' meaning-making processes (Creswell and Poth, 2018). To extend traditional interview approaches, this study intentionally incorporated music as a structured elicitation technique, positioning it as both a data-generation and relational mechanism. Unlike conventional elicitation methods that appear intermittently, music was embedded as the entry point and organizing feature of each interview. This design choice allowed investigation not only of participants' experiences of romantic heartbreak but also of how music shaped participants' articulation, emotional access and narrative construction. Findings Findings suggest that music enhanced rapport, enabled emotional articulation and supported participant agency in meaning-making. This article argues that music-based elicitation functions as both a methodological and relational intervention particularly when exploring stigmatized or emotionally complex experiences. Implications for qualitative research practice, especially in identity-based and trauma-adjacent contexts, are discussed. Originality/value Positioned at the intersection of qualitative inquiry, affect theory and arts-based research, this work examines how music shaped not only what participants shared, but how their experiences became speakable within the interview space. Through reflexive thematic analysis, the study identified several methodological functions of music, including emotional mirroring, narrative anchoring, indirect disclosure and co-interpretation between participant and researcher. The findings suggest that music operates as more than a creative supplement to interviewing; it can function as a relational methodology that restructures emotional access and meaning-making in qualitative research. As both a researcher and therapist, my investment in this work emerged from personal and professional experiences witnessing how music mediates emotional processing, particularly within queer communities where identity, intimacy and emotional expression are often shaped by cultural silence and stigma. This project contributes to growing conversations within arts-based inquiry by positioning music as a methodological and affective practice capable of deepening rapport, reflexivity and collaborative knowledge production.