2007 - Music

I’m not writing a blog to tell you what I liked or didn’t like that came out this year in music. My view of music in 2007 has been largely shaped by one chapter in the book, The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom and an article about that chapter commemorating the 20th anniversary of the book by Mark Steyn in The New Criterion. Here’s an excerpt from Steyn’s article concerning the ubiquity of pop music:

You go to buy some socks, and it’s playing in the store. You get on the red eye to Heathrow, and they pump it into the cabin before you take off. I was filling up at a gas station the other day and I noticed that outside, at the pump, they now pipe pop music at you…Most of us have prejudices: we may not like ballet or golf, but we don’t have to worry about going to the deli and ordering a ham on rye while some ninny in tights prances around us or a fellow in plus-fours tries to chip it out of the rough behind the salad bar. Yet, in the course of a day, any number of non-rock-related transactions are accompanied by rock music. I was at the airport last week, sitting at the gate, and over the transom some woman was singing about having two lovers and being very happy about it. And we all sat there as if it’s perfectly routine.

That pretty much sums it up for me. More than once this year I have walked out of a store because I hated the music I was being forced to listen to. Most of the time, not only was it glorifying some form of immorality but it just sounded bad.

I’m a musical pretender myself. I understand enough to put notes in order but not enough to actually make it sound good. Therefore, it strikes me as somewhat problematic that I can play much of the music being produced today, both Christian and otherwise. So I’m resolved to learn to appreciate more music that is beyond my very limited skills.