We usually prefer all things scientific and complicated to be explained to us by Dr. Brian Cox. We don’t understand most of it but he has a nice face. But over in that America, Dr. Martin Guhn (also quite an amusing name) has analyzed Adele’s smash hit tearjerker and found it to possess the perfect formula for making you cry like you’ve just fallen off your bike onto wet gravel.

Applying the findings of British psychologist John Sloboda (we have a winner) who identified the passages in music that produce certain physical reactions in listeners, Guhn found that Someone Like You was particularly rich in appoggiatura.

What’s that then? Well, an appoggiatura is dissonant note that clashes with the melody just enough to generate tension.

"When the notes return to the anticipated melody, the tension resolves, and it feels good,” explained the clever man.

Appoggiatura have been found to induce “chills” in listeners. But it seems that most music that makes us go all wobbly lipped contains four specific features: starting quite and then going loud, the unexpected arrival of a new instrument or musical element, a change in frequencies and unexpected deviations to the tune.

And according to that man, Adele’s Someone Like You ticks all those boxes.

Anyway, you can read the full explanation over at The Wall Street Journal. It’s quite interesting. Although it leaves out one reason the song makes you, in particular, wibble – the fact that your boyfriend played it on his iPhone last night when he handed you the shitty rose he bought from the Tube station, in the hope you’d nosh him off.

You did.