1) Point of No Return-In Houston I saw Phantom of the Opera for the first time; last night I read the novel; I love this song...'nuff said.
2) Breakdown-Mae-this is now the song that I'm working on for my play...I did finish writing the Ocean.
3) Viva La Vida-Coldplay-amazing song...the string quartet we heard at Wheatstone Houston even played their own arrangement of it...twas pretty good :)
4) Nessun Dorma-Paul Potts-amazing opera music, amazing voice, you can't get much better than this.
5) A Day Late (acoustic)-Anberlin-love this song, but I've never heard the acoustic...hope it's good :)
9 comments:
hehe, if all of Anberlin was in acoustic, I think I'd like it any better than I do and be missing the point! ;)
Do you mean you would like Anberlin better acoustic, or you wouldn't? I listened to this song, and only liked it somewhat. Slowing it down seems to cause it to lose a bit of its drive and energy. Anberlin's Unwinding Cable Car, however, is a lovely more acoustic song and the music and lyrics work quite well together, as of course they should.
I'm now curious, though...when listening to music, which should we value more, good music or good lyrics?
I mean that I like acoustic better temperamentally but that that is not was Anberlin is. I agree that the singers kind of sound sleep deprived, like they are lagging?
To clarify, I think the song is very, very fun. I also think that acoustic doesn't work with the lyrics of the song. :P
Anberlin seems very emotionally evocative, which isn't bad of course. What I struggle with though is that I think they tend to make me feel a certain way that is detached from any sort of experience! That seems weird. :P Hm! :)
Interesting mix! Very eclectic, haha... I'm especially interested in the Phantom nod. I've always liked that song, but I'm never sure if I SHOULD like it. Any thoughts on that?
The appeal seems to lie in the overwhelming irresistibility of that particular moment... and, thanks to the music, we can get an unnatural extension of that "precipital" moment without letting it tumble down into sordid detail. Does that seem right? The sin wouldn't be interesting... but what the sin promises IS interesting, and maybe, in some way, true? I wonder!
About the music v. lyrics question, I've always thought that the two were rather more inseparable than that... like asking whether the mind or the heart is more important. The "right" answer might be the mind or the heart (I'm not sure), but a defect in either makes the thing ugly, and I'm not sure if a tidy (or even a meaningful) separation is possible... what do you think?
(This is Unruh, btw)
Yes, I'm almost sure that I probably ought NOT to like that song...or at least, not listen to it quite as much as I do. The musical really does highlight the power that music has...and if music has that much power over me, it seems that I ought to be fairly wary of listening to a song like Point of No Return too frequently.
I like your point about the difference between what the sin promises and what it delivers. But is it really good to even get that close to sin? Even if we're not actually comitting to it, being allured by what it promises while we know it can't deliver still seems dangerous...
Really? I'd like to think that music and lyrics are inseparable...but what about hymns? They were originally written as poetry, then added to tunes later, and sometimes several different tunes...it seems like they were considered fairly separable. So if a song has beautiful, meaningful lyrics but poor music (as seems to be the case with a lot of Christian songs, sadly), or vice versa, then the whole song needs to be tossed out? Of course the solution would be to make better music AND write better lyrics...but what about the music we already have?
And yes Unruh...I do have somewhat eclectic musical tastes :P
yeah... it definitely seems like we can improve either the lyrics or the music of a song to make them "fit" one another better... and I certainly believe that the lyrics of a song can be good or even excellent poetry and also be terrible as lyrics to a particular tune (or as lyrics at all, depending on the meter).
As far as hymns go... you know what good old C.S. Lewis said *quoted with mischievous smirk*... "dreadful poetry based on dreadful theology set to dreadful music"... but then, he was kind of a grump in church :)
Oh, and the main question!
It certainly seems bad to revel in what sin promises... unless, in some sense, it promises something good that it simply cannot deliver (I think that's what I was wondering about)...
Of course, it's so hard when it comes to sin, because so much sin (maybe all?) is a perversion of something good, and it's hard to disentangle it all.
What I want to say, though, is something more than just "seduction is a perversion of romance" (though I can see how that is true). Is there something true that we can see in such a song that we don't specifically see in romance? M
Maybe if we had art that better portrayed deep romance in all of its surrender, danger, irresistibility, courage, and secrecy/intimacy, then something like the above statement wouldn't sound so trite... I don't know!
Michael,
I've replied to your comments via email :)
Mary Kate, I'm curious as to how Anberlin makes you feel detached...you said earlier that they do evoke some sort of emotion though. Do you mean perhaps that they make you feel an emotion not connected to your previous experience? Why would that be, I wonder? For me at least, Anberlin (and the majority of other rock bands I listen to) are yes very emotionally evocative, but they frequently remind me of some sort of experience I've previously had, and help me to emotionally connect with my own experiences...maybe? Does this make any sense?
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