Lately I've been listening to a lot of electronic-based music. I've always kind of liked it, ever since Dance Mix '95 pretty much. For awhile, though, I was definitely into more grungy music when that was popular in the late 90s. For the most part it really wasn't until first year when Postal Service's "Give Up" came out. I still love that CD so much. It used to be my most favouritest CD until I found The Stars this summer. I just can't get enough of them!!
Thom Yorke (of Radiohead fame) also came out with a solo CD which I absolutely adore. Very electronic, too, but more melancholy than Postal Service. A couple of weeks ago I made a Thom Yorke based Pandora radio station, and found another band that's soooo good: Junior Boys. Except, I don't even know if you can really call electronic-music-groups "bands". I've always been under the impression that a "band" requires musical instruments. Unless a computer is a musical instrument, in my opinion, they're not really a "band". Apparently, Junior Boys are from Hamilton!
Anyways, so really the point of this is the following: one of my friends really likes MuteMath. He suggested I get my little brother their CD for Christmas. So I found one of their songs to sample it to see if its something I think Nick would like. I realized, it's ODDLY happy and hopeful. Like creepily-happy-and-hopeful. To this I had two reactions: i recoiled in disgust a bit (what can I say, as much as I do have Jesus-based-hope, I'm still pretty cynical) and realized that there must be something different about them. They sounded Christian.
So I looked them up and whatdoyouknow! they are. I finally put two and two together. That's why all this time I've really disliked Christian music. Its so barftastically happy. Switchfoot isn't really like that, which is probably why I like them. They love Jesus and they still know the world isn't bunnies jumping over rainbows smelling of cotton-candy. And then it occurred to me: that's also probably why I've never heard of any Christian "indie" bands. Indie, in my experience, is not so happy.
I guess this all begs the question, why do I dislike happy music. Actually, it's not that I dislike happy music. Frou Frou has some upbeat fun happy music. Like "It's Good To Be In Love". I can't really put my finger on it. It seems though that I've always written off Christian music. I still do. My housemate was SOOOO EXCITED that downhere is going to be in TO for WC. I was like "meh" never heard of them and don't really care basically on the basis that they're Christian. Perhaps its just the mood of exhaustion I'm in due to exams. butttt its been a pattern for most of my life so I kind of doubt that.
any thoughts?
3 comments:
I've been listening to lots of music vis Yahoo! Music music videos... and I realized that even though most of what you say about Christian music being "barftastically happy" (lol what a classic phrase) is true, I'd rather have that then "Fergalicious/definition/make the boys go loco"....
and a lot of female solo singers are like that... "I'm hot and your not" "my boyfriend broke up with me and I'm still in love with him" "my boyfriend broke up with me and its the best thing ever happened to me like ever!"
Meanwhile, rap = look at me I'm hating on the cops and got lots of money yo.
Modern rock = Loud harsh incomprehensible screaming, and the understandable bits are all about violence.
*yes, the above are huge generalizations... I've also heard lots of good music I've really enjoyed, though the lyrics are pretty sketchy*
I guess what I'm saying is that I find happy music preferable to some of the negative material thats out there... contentwise.
yeah that's true. I just don't generally listen to any of that stuff. I don't listen to the radio or MuchMusic stuff anymore. So I guess that doesn't really have much of a LASTING effect on me.
You know, there's something else I realized in terms of music and Christian music (for some reason your post has made me really think about the music that I listen to... also found some samples of "The Postal Service" and "The Stars"). Given that there's a wider pool, it's a lot easier to find a band with solid tunes in the secular music pool than in the Christian one.
(This analysis from sitting through a couple songs from Pandora... the links that it makes from song to song are a lot better when I typed in Papa Roach vs. Relient K. Speaking of which, Pandora is genius.)
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