Thank You for the Music!

Daily writing prompt

What would your life be like without music?

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If music never existed in the first place, perhaps I wouldn’t miss it 😀. But if music was banned in 2025, I’d be very sorry. Music has always been a huge part of my life. It’s a delightful gift from God.

My poor heart was heavy
My poor heart was stone
Then I heard them - they were angels
And they were singing: 'you're not alone.'
'There is a peace
You've never known.' ....
Sweet gospel music
Carry this boy, away from danger

So I say thank you for the music, the songs I'm singing
Thanks for all the joy they're bringing
Who can live without it? I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance, what are we?
So I say thank you for the music, for giving it to me

I’ve often wondered what the secondary reason for music is. How would atheist scientists explain why music strikes such a deep chord within us? I asked Microsoft Co-Pilot, and it mentioned six possible explanations:

• Charles Darwin suggested that music evolved as a form of courtship display—like a peacock’s tail. Musical ability may signal intelligence, creativity, and motor coordination, making someone more attractive to potential mates.
• Music may have evolved from the melodic vocalizations caregivers use to soothe and bond with infants.
• Music helps groups synchronize, cooperate, and feel united.
• Music is not an adaptation but a pleasurable by-product of other evolved traits—like language, pattern recognition, and emotional processing.
• Music may have evolved to express and regulate emotions, helping humans communicate complex feelings before language fully developed.
• Music may not have a biological origin but instead emerged as a cultural technology—like fire or writing—that shaped human societies over time.

I can see some sense in these, but I still regard it as an amazing gift from God – like being in love for the first time – a little piece of heaven on earth.

Of course, there are different types of music, and I haven’t always liked all kinds of music. Sometimes, I’ve seen music as a bad influence. For example, in my teens, though I genuinely liked the music of the 1970s, I also saw it as a sort of a badge of coolness or toughness. So, I was quite proud to be into punk and new wave. And so much of that was nasty.

I think of the Strangler’s first album, Rattus Norvegicus. It was good rock music, but the lyrics seemed to glorify violence, drugs and promiscuity. I wasn’t into any of that, but it annoyed me that I tended to see The Stranglers as heroes and people like Cliff Richard as dorky. Maybe I was a bit dorky myself 😀.

When I committed my life to Christ in 1980, I got rid of all my punk albums. I did hold onto some of the less problematic albums, such as my Beatles albums, but I even contemplated giving up pop music completely. Some Christians that I knew only listened to Christian music. And I tended to idolize rock stars, so I wondered if I would be a better Christian if I severed all links with pop and rock. I thought of this verse from the sermon on the mount.

Matt 5:20
And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

I don’t think anyone thought that Jesus was asking us to cut off our hands 😀. It’s more about distancing ourselves from things that might cause us to sin. For example, an alcoholic might need to avoid pubs and old friends that might urge him back on the drink.

I did distance myself from the music scene for a while. I remember being a little sorry to miss an Ian Dury and the Blockheads concert at the Cork City Hall in 1981. And I didn’t go and see The Specials and The Beat at the Arcadia that year. In early 1982, I went to see U2 at the City Hall. And I never really stopped listening to pop music altogether, but I thought it would be good to get into classical music and Christian music. Much later, I did manage to start liking classical music. I credit Inspector Morse with that 😀. And when I got into my twenties, I had a more mature attitude to pop music. I stopped idolizing stars.

The only Christian rock music that I ever liked was Bob Dylan’s Christian albums. I never really liked anything else, but as the years went by I started enjoying hymns and worship music. I can listen to pop music now without it having a bad effect on me. I enjoy reading pop and rock biographies. I’ve often wished that I was a rock star, but when I read about their lives, so much of them are messed up. At very best, their lives can be mundane. For example, when I recently watched Get Back on Disney Plus, I thought that it would be nice to be in the Beatles, but it didn’t seem anything like as exciting as it seemed when I was young. Much of their studio work was mundane. And I’ve been listening to a biography of Paul McCartney on Audible, and again, it doesn’t seem much better than my own life. I’d like to be famous, but I’m famous now through this blog 😀. I have over 2 billion subscribers – or is it over 200? There’s definitely a 2 in it 😀.

What I particularly like about music is how songs can bring you back to different parts of your life. That’s why I try to take a continued interest in contemporary music. I got into pop music in 1972. There was a time when anyone could mention a song title to me, and I could tell them the exact month and year that it hit the charts. I could probably have done that up to the year 2000. I have to confess, it’s a struggle to find contemporary songs that I like nowadays, but sometimes, I find a song that might have been popular at some point in the last 20 years that strikes a chord with me. It often happens some years after it was on the radio. Music seems downright magical at times.

It would be nice if they made on explicitly Christian album, but I think they craved coolness a little too much 😀. Maybe it’s almost impossible to make a Christian rock album that’s a real classic. Perhaps part of the magic of lyrical content is the element of ambiguity and mystery. You lose all that if the lyrics have a clear message. Hymns work well, but maybe when you attempt to do so in rock music, it just doesn’t work.

But it’s often pointed out that so much of modern music has its roots in evangelical churches of various types. You get plenty of cool Christian country music and black gospel music. Here are two examples:

It also fascinates me that reggae music is so good, and so much of that is spiritual – though it’s Rastafarian, which most people outside it would regard as a peculiar cult. And if evangelicals tried to make a reggae album it would probably just sound silly. It would be interesting though, if Jamaicans tried it. Bob Marley’s Could You Be Loved was in the charts in August 1980, when I became a Christian. I like the following lines:

The road of life is rocky and you may stumble too
So while you point your fingers, someone else is judging you