If my life were a movie, popular music would be its soundtrack. It would be an eclectic release as my tastes are rather expansive, including classic rock, heavy metal, folk, punk, funk, classical, and even a show tune or two when the occasion calls for it. There’s a tune for every moment and a playlist for every season. During Lent, however, I’ve made it a tradition to limit my listening to music that helps fix my eyes on Jesus, him being the reason for the season and all that. My seasonal playlist brims with classic hymns, CCM favorites old and new, Aretha, and the like. Last year, I even sam ..read more

I have a sliding scale to determine how severe my depression is at any given moment: the more power metal unironically inspires me, the more depressed I likely am. Now, as a metalhead of old, I love taking a jaunt through a Grailknights, Theocracy, or Dragonforce album. Interlacing arpeggiated guitars sprint alongside breakneck drumming while the lead singer yodels over the entire thing about dragons, days of yore, and various types of good and evil magic. It’s as if some enterprising guitarist listened to a few Dio records and said to themselves “Gosh, this could be much, much nerdier.” I acc ..read more

Judy Garland refused to sing the song as it was. Songwriters Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine wrote “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” as one of the central pieces of the now classic 1944 movie musical Meet Me in St. Louis. It was to be sung when Garland’s character mournfully comforts her sister on Christmas Eve, just as their family discovered that they will be moving cross country after the holidays. The original lyrics read: Have yourself a merry little Christmas It may be your last Next year we may all be living in the past Have yourself a merry little Christmas Pop that champagne cork ..read more

With the release of Midnights, Taylor Swift’s refrain of life awake at midnight is finally culminating in a curated anthem. Over 16 years, Swift has refined her motif of sleeplessness. In “Mary’s Song” she’s awake at “2 a.m. riding in your truck,” but six years later, “the lingering question kept me up, 2 a.m., who do you love?”  In “All Too Well,” she’s “dancing ’round the kitchen in the refrigerator light,” but seven years later, “in the night, I pace like a ghost.” Now, Swift invites us on “a journey through terrors and sweet dreams.” Insomniacs are welcomed into camaraderie ..read more

Well, I was borned a coal miner’s daughter / In a cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler… We know her story because we know her songs. Born into Appalachian poverty during the Depression. Married at 15, a mother the next year. Young Loretta Lynn lived a life circumscribed by grindingly hard work and spousal abuse. That is, until her husband, Doolittle, struck by her singing talent, bought her a guitar. And the rest is musical history. By the time she passed away on October 4 at the age of 90, the voice of that young housewife from Kentucky had been burned into the American consciousness. The Countr ..read more

Chances are, you’ve never heard of John Mark Heard. Don’t worry, it’s not because you live under a rock—most, it would seem, have no idea who the Georgia-born folk rocker was, nor how indebted the modern music industry is to his body of work. And when I write, “the modern music industry,” I don’t mean the pop singers who hog the limelight and the headlines, I’m talking about the real movers and shakers, the songwriters and producers who have raised the bar and built the pedestals on which many of those pop icons stand. People like Phil Keaggy, who is consistently ranked among the greatest guit ..read more

The last big new show to make waves on Broadway prior to the pandemic was, by its own admission, “an old song.” Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown is a folk-music adaptation of the Orpheus and Eurydice story from Greek and Roman mythology, transplanted to a setting that suggests Depression-Era America. Though its road to Broadway was a long and circuitous one, its impact once it got there was immediate, and it won eight of the 13 Tonys for which it was nominated in 2019. In its outline, Hadestown more or less follows the traditional arc of the tale. Orpheus is a poet and musician who sings and plays t ..read more

The question of the dissemination of dangerous ideas through art is always a contentious one . . . This content is for Christ and Pop Culture members only. If you'd like to continue reading it, either log in to your account or subscribe today ..read more

Both Kate Bush and Metallica are having a moment, thanks to Stranger Things—a  show that makes old flowers bloom whenever it waves its nostalgic magic wand. But neither Bush’s sumptuous weirdness nor Metallica’s crunchy fretboard dance are quite as foreboding as the corpse-painted crew hammering their gauntleted fists on the back door. Which is to say, Jamie Campbell Bower1, the face behind the show’s arch-villain, recently revealed Vecna’s playlist. Has the hour finally arrived for bands like Darkthrone, Mayhem, and Carpathian Forest to quit breathing fire in forgotten Norwegian caves an ..read more

Even if you don’t struggle with anxiety and depression, it’s certain that you know someone who does. The PPDA (Psychophysiologic Disorders Association) lists dozens of chronic illnesses that are directly caused by anxiety or depression, including chronic muscle pains, migraines, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue. Like a vicious taskmaster, anxiety and depression lash the mind until neuro-pathways of fear and pain are formed. I wish I could say that Christians are exempt from the effects of fear, but to say so would be a lie. Even our Lord Jesus experienced anxiety at times, which Christians ar ..read more