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MOMENTOUS MONDAYS: INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS OF ALL TIME – WEEK 50: SHERYL CROW

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‘…sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I listened to great bands and songs, and the great albums from said bands, when they actually released, rather than all these years later. How would my music tastes have changed- or would they have stayed the same? How would my outlook on life be, would I be more of an extrovert or an introvert, would my values change or would I still be in the same profession that I am currently in? I know, weird questions, but I truly believe that music and the song that can impact and encourage, influence and challenge; can really change a trajectory of someone depending on when they hear it in their lives. And at a certain point, a song can be a catalyst for change, personal or as a collective, to be something better, to look inward and see what needs to realign and refocus, or what values that is held close, need to be reassessed, and which need to still stay the same. So to answer my own question that I posed earlier…I don’t really know what would’ve happened if I did listen to artists when their respective albums released. I mean, had I did listen to artists like Avril Lavigne, Ronan Keating, U2, Carrie Underwood, Martina McBride, even Owl City and Lifehouse, during the times when albums of these said artists released; maybe, just maybe, the wonder and awe, and the unique feeling that comes when discovering a whole discography of a new artist, could be less and less. Because essentially if you follow an artist’s career from year dot, you become accustomed to their music your whole life, as opposed to someone else discovering for the first time a whole discography of an artist they’ve missed out on…’

‘…mainstream music for me has always taken a bit of a back seat throughout my life, and it was only when I heavily invested my time and my intrigue and interest into this blog series that I started to undertake last year, that I truly understood that there was a lot of mainstream music out there that I was missing. That mainstream music was just another avenue of music that God can and does use for Himself to be revealed in our lives whenever we hear the music, either currently of now, or of the years gone by of yesteryear. As I’m about to undertake blog post #40 this week, I have reflected upon the artists I’ve delved into thus far: Delta Goodrem, Lifehouse, Sara Bareilles, Ronan Keating, Owl City, Martina McBride, U2, The McClymonts, Shania Twain, Ed Sheeran, Rascal Flatts, Evanescence, OneRepublic, Tina Arena and Daughtry, to name a few; have all had impacting and influential careers in music over the years. And all of them have been instrumental in the reshaping of my own views of mainstream music since my discoveries of this wide array of music from last year onward. And, all these artists aforementioned are under the label or category of ‘mainstream’ music, or just music that isn’t Christian, or ‘religious’ in any way. And maybe, just maybe, mainstream music doesn’t have to be as bad as I myself originally thought it was back in high school. It was only last year that I was stretched in my understanding and comprehension of what good music really looked like, and that it was ok for me to enjoy music that wasn’t Christian in any way, and that God Himself could move if He wanted to, speaking to me through the unlikeliest of sources, even mainstream music. And that’s ok! …’

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MOMENTOUS MONDAYS: INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS OF ALL TIME – WEEK 49: FIVE FOR FIGHTING

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I don’t know about you but sometimes I feel like a song can totally change the mood of a room, or it can lift the spirits of the entire world’s population at any given point in time. As I’ve said time and time again in blogs previously written, there is power in the song that may not be present in an encouraging ted talk, or a sermon. Songs have a licence in a certain moment to be the catalysts of positive change, to delve down deep into the soul and to ask the questions that maybe no one has ever dared to ask before. To challenge our very being when other conversations and introspective discussions have failed to do so, because whether we agree with this notion or not, this much is true- songs have power over us in a way that no other entertainment medium has. We listen to music at all hours of the day- morning, noon, afternoon and night. Songs travel down deep into our psyche, make us realise things about ourselves that we may not have been privy to, to begin with. Creating a song, to put it blunt, almost gives you licence to speak about almost every topic that can be judged as being ‘taboo’ in a sense, if said out loud and not tied to music- politics, death and religion, the three major things that cannot be spoken about at a dinner table? Discussed in song, I’m sure, at one point in history or another. Faith, doubt, uncertainty, love, loneliness, worry, hope, joy, and everything else in between; are all given the go-ahead when it comes to songs, music, and what is given the go-ahead in terms of what topics can be availed to the masses.

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