Abstract
With the United Nations' 2030 Agenda elevating Good Health and Well-Being (SDG 3) and Quality Education (SDG 4) to global priorities, music education, by virtue of its cross-cultural character and emotional resonance, is increasingly recognized as a potential pathway for fostering adolescents' sustainable development competencies. Seventy-six core publications were retrieved from the Web of Science, MEDLINE, and ProQuest databases, and bibliometric and knowledge-mapping analyses were conducted using CiteSpace and VOSviewer. The field's trajectory was deconstructed along three dimensions: temporal (annual publication output and author contribution levels), spatial (national participation and institutional collaboration density), and content (high-frequency keyword clustering and evolution of emerging themes). Findings reveal a two-stage "hiatus-surge" pattern in publication trends; the emergence of a collaborative network among core authors, albeit with an imbalanced geographic distribution dominated by North America and Europe; and five principal thematic clusters following a three-stage spiral progression-from targeted education interventions for special groups, through general adolescent development, to professional public-health services. Through a sustainable development-oriented, multidimensional evaluation framework and a standardized literature-review paradigm, multifaceted mechanisms by which music education enhances adolescents' subjective well-being are uncovered, and evidence-based recommendations for sustainable education reform are provided (PROSPERO Registration ID: CRD420251030162).