How did Christians shift pop music from sex, drugs, and rock and roll to themes of faith and devotion? We ll discuss with Mark Joseph, author of Rock Gets Religion: The Battle for the Soul of the Devil's Music. Then a caravan of over 1,000 illegal aliens wants to invade our country. And the mainstream media are steadfastly denying any problem. China strikes back at UF s tariffs. And finally, hope for the future?
00:04:13.000You know, so rock begins, first of all, religious people and traditionalists, there's so much, so many things happening at the same time coming at them.
00:04:33.680And the kind of knee-jerk reaction was, well, let's just burn records because we don't like the influence this is having on our young people.
00:04:43.520We'll come up with these weird excuses like we heard these beats in the jungles of Africa when they were doing voodoo ceremonies.
00:04:49.020Like, oh, the craziest stuff you can imagine.
00:04:51.180And so there's an overreaction to the power of rock and roll.
00:04:53.880And it took a while for especially religious leaders, more conservative figures, to go, wait a minute, there's nothing inherently wrong with this music.
00:05:01.940It's all about what you're singing and talking about.
00:05:04.720And so that overreaction then leads to the formation of the Christian rock industry, which is like a parallel universe.
00:05:11.320So you have kind of normal music over here, and then you have contemporary Christian music over here that's happening on a parallel track.
00:05:18.880And that went on for about 30 years until what I talk about in the book is the mainstreamization of those artists.
00:05:26.120So the kinds of artists that you didn't know growing up, bands like artists like Phil Keggy and DeGarmo and Key and all these amazing artists that never really got heard because they were in this Christian music business.
00:05:38.520What's happened today is there's been a radical change.
00:05:41.380And the mainstream music business is actually full of a lot of very religious people.
00:05:45.240People don't quite realize that people like Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber and many others are actually kind of, you know, ordinary kind of church-going Americans in the case of Justin Bieber, Canadians.
00:05:57.480And these artists have really brought their influence to bear in the mainstream music business, not often the fringe.
00:06:21.060Was it The Passion of the Christ as this mainstream, obviously 100% Christian movie?
00:06:27.960What events do you think pushed these religious undertones that had maybe always been around rock music or coming up from gospel and pushed it into the mainstream?
00:06:38.240I talk about four big things in the book.
00:06:40.620So the first thing is artists like a Justin Bieber is a great example.
00:06:47.660In the past, and a lot of this has to do with theology, believe it or not, but the way you believe and the things you believe and the way you look at the world really influences how you act.
00:06:56.100And so we had a theology of separation back in the day, which was what Christians would separate themselves from the world.
00:07:03.320They would use kind of Bible verses out of context and say, come ye apart and be separate.
00:07:09.020Because the mainstream rock business is dirty, we have to separate and form a Christian side of it.
00:07:21.000And so Justin Bieber is actually a really good example because his mother is a very devout Christian woman.
00:07:26.060And in the past, Justin Bieber would have been guided to Nashville to sign with a Christian music label as the son of a very devout Christian woman.
00:07:34.360And then you and I wouldn't have heard of Justin Bieber except for on the fringes of culture.
00:07:40.620So that's, that's happened with dozens and dozens and dozens of artists.
00:07:43.900The second one that's really significant is American Idol.
00:07:47.140American Idol plays a significant role in this process.
00:07:50.180Uh, because in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and most of the nineties, basically our rock and pop stars are picked by 10 white guys in Hollywood.
00:07:59.340Now you may think you're an Eagles fan and you discovered the Eagles in 1975, but you really didn't.
00:08:05.760You only discovered that because a guy in, in a gatekeeper in Hollywood discovered them for you.
00:08:25.000And so certain people were getting chosen to be rock and pop stars because the gatekeepers approved of them.
00:08:31.340So what, and I give an example in the book, there's a Christian pop star named Keith Green who became a Christian pop star.
00:08:37.460But before that, he actually auditioned for Clive Davis in New York in 1976, I believe it was, didn't get the gig.
00:08:44.840And so he had to go into Christian pop.
00:08:46.980Well, American Idol breaks up the entire paradigm of the Clive Davis types picking our rock and pop stars.
00:08:53.800And so for the first time, you know, Susie in Cleveland and Hank in, in Alabama, they're picking the pop and rock stars in the 2000s, many of them.
00:09:06.280Dozens and dozens of artists are not being picked.
00:09:09.340They're in a sense going around the gatekeepers and getting chosen by the American people directly.
00:09:13.600And then the third and fourth things are Alice Cooper is an example where in the old days, when a rock star would have a conversion to Christianity, he would immediately exit off stage right.
00:10:01.960The fourth one is bands that were big in the Christian world began to cross over into the mainstream side.
00:10:08.340For instance, Switchfoot or Joy Williams actually had a career as a Christian pop star before she became half of the Civil Wars who became this, you know, popular band.
00:10:20.120So those four phenomena have really changed the landscape.
00:10:22.480Speaking of Switchfoot, you write in the book, quote, Switchfoot presented fans and the pop music culture with a winsome group of surf rockers whose smiles, floppy hairstyles and comforting personae masked a deep message.
00:10:38.260One that was in some ways far more troubling than anything that Marilyn Manson, Eminem or Insane Clown Posse had managed to shock the public with.
00:10:55.420You know, I went to a Switchfoot concert at the House of Blues one time and I looked back up in the in the seats and I saw three generations of fans.
00:11:29.960But also just in terms of messaging, you know, there there is a there has been something of a conservative backlash against the old ways of rock and roll.
00:11:41.400And, you know, I credit part of this, by the way, to the old VH1 series behind the music.
00:11:47.600You guys remember that from the old days.
00:11:49.440I think that's had a it's hard to quantify, but it's had an effect.
00:11:54.340And the reason I say that is, you know, young bands would grow up when they were teenagers.
00:12:24.840I think it's it is kind of led to like a even if you're not religious, there's definitely kind of a clean rock segment of rock music where they just I'd never forget going back going to a Megadeth concert.
00:12:37.940And and I went backstage and it was like an alcohol free zone.
00:12:41.340And I'm thinking like, wait a minute, this is a Megadeth.
00:12:44.940There is something that gets a little exhausting about sex, drugs and rock and roll.
00:12:50.460Right. You know, if you're just all you're doing is going out and doing a bunch of drugs and partying all night at a certain point, it does get old.
00:12:57.260It's not very gratifying. You do get sex-austed ultimately.
00:13:00.620And that might be it, too, where to say it's very easy.
00:13:04.320It's it's a cliche to say go out and, you know, party all night and have casual sex forever and ever.
00:13:12.000There's a time and a place for everything. And that place is college.
00:13:14.520But you have to graduate college at some point. You have to go on and grow up eventually.
00:13:18.760And there's a real rebellion in that. I think it's why Jordan Peterson is selling a gazillion books now and other people who talk about this.
00:13:26.800People say, you know, maybe I should clean my room. Maybe I should get my life in order.
00:13:30.720Maybe there's something rebellious about that.
00:13:32.500Well, when when the culture is now baby boomers to be countercultural is, in a sense, going against that ethic.
00:13:40.460And there was a funny moment I talked about in the book when Justin Bieber speaks out against abortion.
00:13:45.920And I just thought it was so odd that I'm watching The View one day and the old ladies in The View are scolding Justin Bieber for being pro-life.
00:13:53.700It's like something is wrong with this picture. Right.
00:13:56.560They're like they're saying, well, he doesn't understand because he's too young.
00:13:59.300It's like when you have a 60 year old, you know, whatever her age is, Joy Behar, like scolding whoever was in The View that week.
00:14:06.600Right. It was. But it was definitely things are upside down.
00:14:10.020And there's an old adage that says to rebel and season is not to rebel.
00:14:14.220And so when everybody is of a certain mindset, it's no longer that cool.
00:14:18.520And so you are having a kind of a countercultural moment in a lot of cases.
00:14:22.020That is such a funny moment where they say, you don't understand, Bieber.
00:14:25.260You're not rebellious like all of us 60 year old women.
00:14:28.260You keep using that word. I think it doesn't mean what you think it means.
00:14:33.260Well, you know, as the son of a unwed teen mom, I think Justin Bieber may have an opinion on that topic, shall we say.
00:14:40.980His life could have gone in a very different direction had his mother made a different choice.
00:14:44.820That's right. And there has been a shift within even certain musicians themselves, within broadly over these musicians.
00:14:54.060You would see Janet Jackson, as you write. She used to sing about chastity.
00:14:58.140She sang, let's wait a while. Seven years later, she's singing, that's the way love goes.
00:15:03.720Miley Cyrus is this cute little kid. And then she has this shift and she's doing heinous and not even terribly scintillating things on stage during the VMAs.
00:15:15.160Is this a cultural shift or is this just the way the music industry works?
00:15:20.240Well, there is a process. I give the Janet Jackson story in the book and it's a great example.
00:15:26.520And thank you for reading the book, by the way. What a shock. An interviewer has read the book.
00:15:29.700They never they never do it. The only interviewers only ever read my my book because it's a quick read.
00:15:34.280But I really enjoyed the book. I recommend it to to anyone listening and watching.
00:15:39.380No, thank you. Yeah, there is a certain pressure the music business puts on you.
00:15:43.760And Janet's a great example. I've interviewed her once years ago.
00:15:47.620But, you know, sure, her mother is a very devout Jehovah's Witness.
00:15:51.200She's sort of a traditionally traditionally conservative type person.
00:15:54.100But over a period of time, the music business kind of wears you down.
00:15:58.340And the other thing that's an interesting phenomenon is a lot of male songwriters write kind of male sexual fantasy songs and then give them to female songwriters and say, here, sing this.
00:16:33.020What he's hoping. Right. What he's hoping a young girl is going to say.
00:16:36.220But it really is astonishing. And so there is that pressure that comes to bear from the machine on these young artists to be hyper sexualized.
00:16:45.180And to write about topics like that or to sing about topics like that, where that that really is probably not naturally in many of their hearts.
00:16:52.120On the question of the of the product itself, of the pop music itself, you know, and the conservative view on this, the traditionalist knock was probably best summed up by Hank Hill, the cartoon character who said Christian rock doesn't make rock music better.
00:17:06.740It makes Christianity worse. And you talk about Kanye West in the book and some Kanye songs are both good songs and they're quite Christian.
00:17:17.200You know, Jesus walks. God, show me the way because the devil's trying to break me down.
00:17:21.520Others are not good songs and they're very self-aggrandizing and they're vicious and they're just awful.
00:17:28.880And is there value to a Christian pop culture if the culture itself is degraded, if the music itself isn't very good?
00:17:38.220Does this mean you're not going to be buying Snoop Dogg's gospel album?
00:17:41.680I was I was waiting to be on it. I was hoping he would ask me to to perform.
00:17:47.920Right. Well, you know, seriously, on a serious note, I think what happened in the old days, like when we were kids, you know, your friends would say, well, Christian rock sucks, whatever.
00:17:57.040What I discovered what it really wasn't the artists, it was the pressures that would come to bear on an artist in the Christian music industry that would make the music kind of boring and derivative and in a certain way.
00:18:08.900And the reason I know this for a fact is like an artist like Joy Williams.
00:18:13.080So when she did three Christian pop albums, you know, it was Christian pop.
00:18:17.380She kind of breaks free of the constraints of that industry and then becomes the civil wars.
00:18:21.720And now suddenly every NPR loving, vocal driving person in on the East Coast loves her and adores her.
00:18:35.260So I don't think the artists themselves or the music was that way, but sometimes the pressure of that industry caused it to be less than than than great music.
00:18:43.940But in terms of like the hip hop community and the in the gospel community, there's always been a tension between those two worlds.
00:18:50.980And there's always been a temptation on the part of especially African-American artists to make one one off gospel albums.
00:18:58.800Right. So you've got Snoop Dogg doing, you know, kind of R rated or X rated stuff.
00:19:03.040Then I'm going to do my gospel album now, which is always a little a little bit weird.
00:19:06.420Right. But, you know, I don't want to judge anybody's gospel album.
00:19:10.840But I think what we're moving more toward is a cohesive view and a cohesive person who doesn't do one offs.
00:19:16.560I'll get Alice Cooper's a great example.
00:19:17.920So he's still Alice Cooper, but his lyrics are different now.
00:19:22.080And so you don't have the Alice Cooper does gospel and then does Alice Cooper.
00:19:26.240He's one in the same, but he's incorporating his beliefs into his stage persona and into his music.
00:21:04.760But the point is there's no religious moment that I could see in that entire series of two Catholic people who got together and fell in love and got married.
00:21:11.920And I think what it is is we had this obsession in a great part of the last 50 years with de-religializing our pop culture.
00:21:19.540And I don't know what the reasons were exactly.
00:21:21.260Maybe it was an advertiser saying, hey, don't show them with a priest.
00:21:24.500We don't want to take sides in religion.
00:21:27.440But the point is we've tried—we've bent over backwards to create this fake secular culture that doesn't even exist in our real lives.
00:21:34.720You know, our neighbors go to church once a week.
00:21:36.600Your neighbor goes to Bible study, whatever it might be, to temple.
00:21:39.840And so for some reason we've felt the need to create a fake artificial culture in our media that's not reflective of our lives.
00:21:46.620We always talk about we've got to keep it real.
00:22:24.660And I think that the most interesting pieces are the ones that, you know, explore what it means to be human and life after death and life meaning and all those things.
00:22:35.040When we can't do that, then it kind of limits and makes art less interesting.
00:22:39.460So for me, you know, I think I'm one of 90 percent that believe in God.
00:22:43.320I think it's fine that we have our entertainment with a side, with a strong helping of God in the mix and faith and religion.
00:22:50.700And if it becomes divisive, that's another issue that could happen.
00:22:54.520But if it's in a way that causes us to think deeply about things in our lives and meaning, I think it's fine.
00:31:34.920In the face of this bullying and these threats of mass violence, we continue to stand in solidarity with displaced people of all races, ethnicities and creeds, abilities and gender and sexual identities.
00:31:51.720I don't know how they got sexual identities in there.
00:31:53.540There's a very simple case of people wanting to leave their country, which isn't terribly nice, and come to our country, which is very nice.
00:31:58.840The trouble is they don't want to respect our laws.
00:35:59.620They tell us to listen to the children.
00:36:00.760What they don't know about that line, by the way, is that they think they're quoting George Bernard Shaw in a play called Back to Methuselah.
00:36:07.200What they don't realize is they're quoting a character from Back to Methuselah, which is Satan.