Just one falsetto ...

For putting people in the mood, there's nothing quite like hearing a man sing really, really high. Chloe Veltman finds out why we love wailing and warbling
The Bee Gees
The Bee Gees, from left: Robin, Barry and Maurice Gibb. Photograph: Lennox McLendon/AP

In the 1994 film Farinelli, a pretty countess with a discourteous habit of reading during opera performances suddenly finds herself distracted from her latest volume. The source of the disruption is Farinelli, or Carlo Broschi, one of the most famous castrati of the 18th century, belting out an aria in a register normally associated with burglar alarms. The next day, the countess is still reeling: "What I felt yesterday evening when I heard you sing is beyond my understanding," she tells Farinelli. "I believe you were responsible for my first musical orgasm."

When it comes to putting the female of the species in the mood (and, often, the male), there's nothing quite like hearing a man singing really, really high. Just as women swooned at Farinelli 250 years ago, so we have screamed at the Beach Boys' peppy refrains, gyrated to Michael Jackson's banshee whoops and melted at James Blunt's strained warbles. Vintage video clips of teenyboppers screeching at the falsetto bits in Beatles concerts testify to the impact of the high male voice.

In evolutionary terms, this response doesn't make much sense. Scientific studies have shown that, when it comes to speaking voices, women tend to favour partners of the opposite sex who have sonorous, James Earl Jones-esque timbres over effete squeakers (though there are exceptions -for one, David Beckham).

So why do high voices do it for us when it comes to singing? At the most basic level, strong, high-pitched sounds are physically exciting. David Huron, a professor of music and cognitive science at Ohio State University, explains: "When singers sing high and loud, the brain releases the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine, causing a general increase in physiological arousal - higher heart rate, faster respiration, increased perspiration and greater attentiveness." Then there's the fact that high male singing, like most great music, plays with our expectations. "There's a sort of 'gentle giant' idea at work," Huron says. "High male voices appeal because they are assertive without being threatening."

For the gospel music producer and author Anthony Heilbut, it is this gender-bending quality that renders the high male voice so powerful. "Both sexes are stimulated by androgynous sounds," he says. "Something wild happens in the listener's ear because the voice she's hearing goes against nature." The theory extends to singers' physical appearance: part of the appeal of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler is the combination of his bad-boy looks and bell-like falsetto.

When men sing in falsetto, or what's called the "head voice" (as opposed to the lower "chest voice", where most normal speech sits), they can reach the same notes as female vocalists without sounding remotely girly. When Thom Yorke curls his lips around the sky-scraping passages of songs like High and Dry, vulnerability bleeds into strength; there's a virile edge to the German countertenor Andreas Scholl's sweet, warm voice.

A high voice is nothing without some intention behind it, however. The affectation in the refrain of Morrissey's The Last of the Famous International Playboys loads his lyric with irony. As the American classical countertenor David Daniels puts it: "If you design your ornamentation or high notes to do nothing but thrill, you don't end up giving the most organic performance. It becomes all about histrionics and self-adoration."

Not all high-voiced men understand this. Justin Timberlake's bird-like vocal flights in songs like My Love and What Goes Around sound canned: he has a classic soul vocalist's range, but lacks the emotional depth to back it up. When Mike Patton of Faith No More hits the high notes, he sounds like he's being disembowelled with a teaspoon. And the only existing recording of an operatic castrato singing, in 1902, doesn't exactly fill the listener with lust: Alessandro Moreschi's gurgling, swooping voice sounds like a tipsy drag queen desperate to get out of her stilettos at the end of a long night.

Of course, musical taste is highly subjective. Until the countertenor renaissance in the second half of the 20th century, the high male voice was largely considered a freakish aberration. "Now for a novelty!" read the title card for a 1932 performance by the British soprano Frank Ivallo. "The man with a woman's voice!"

It's just as well that pop musicians didn't let such attitudes stop them. Imagine how the Bee Gees' Stayin' Alive would sound if the Gibb brothers had sung an octave lower - or what Al Green's voice would be like devoid of its cries, hums and yelps. Green, for one, understands the orgasmic power wielded by a man singing up high. Talking about his most recent album, Lay It Down, he told an interviewer earlier this year: "Baby, there's love in it, out it, on the side of it, on top of it, on the bottom of it. It's basically to evoke emotion - and love, love, love".