Kindred spirits make music: a review of The Road to Escondido by J. J. Cale & Eric Clapton In 1970, after years of proving…
Would Jesus Mosh? How Christian is Christian Heavy Metal?
One of the questions I gave my high school students on their Rhetoric Final Exam was “Can Hardcore Music be Christian?” It was a…
Emmylou Harris, Red Dirt Girl (2000)
If there’s no heaven, what is this hunger for?” Red Dirt Girl Age and the Gospel have something in common: realism. Illusions evaporate. Like…
System of a Down, Toxicity (2001)
I don’t make a habit of listening to heavy metal music—particularly metal with a decidedly anti-Christian, Green Party, left-leaning bias. But I do try…
Spirituality and Pop Music – from Tori Amos to Lauryn Hill
Spirituality is hip and was omnipresent in pop music in 1998. From pop to hip-hop, Sanskrit to Scripture, popular culture displayed a renewed spiritual…
Lifehouse, No Name Face (2000)
The seventeenth century apologist Blaise Pascal wisely noted that “There are only three sorts of people: those who have found God and serve him;…
Robin & Linda Williams, Deeper Waters (2004)
We spake of many a vanished scene, Of what we once had thought and said, Of what had been, and might have been, And…
Bad Religion, The Process of Belief (2002)
The process of belief is an elixir when you’re weak I must confess, at times I indulge it on the sneak.” ~Bad Religion Contemporary…
Radiohead, Kid A (2000)
Radiohead’s long-anticipated record, Kid A (2000) is the antidote to the Disneyfied-saccharine-commodification of pop and the misogynist-angry-victimization of hip hop. Instead, Kid A is…
Paula Cole, Amen (1999)
Seven-time Grammy nominee and 1998 Best New Artist, Paula Cole has released her latest album, Amen, which has met with a strongly mixed reaction…