Listening to Music Religiously

For some people, listening to music is a religious experience. I’m not one of those people. But I do like some kinds of music. And listening to it can occur in a variety of religious contexts, producing some great moments.

With one of the kids crying for his mother on the way to daycare today, I turned on the radio, because the kid loves music. I’m ambivalent about listening to music during sefirah, so I usually don’t. Three songs came on between when I turned the radio on and when I dropped the kid off: American Pie, Live and Let Die (Beatles, not GnR), and Bohemian Rhapsody. The older kid absolutely LOVED American Pie. And I admit, we stayed in the car idling until the last song ended.

Last month, I took the car to a manual carwash, y’know, w/ vacuums and hoses and whatever, to clean the car for Pesach. There was some fellow who was cleaning his car and listening to some very loud entertainment (I am loath to call it ‘music’) which I didn’t find very entertaining. Aside from the fact that I simply didn’t enjoy the sound, I found the lyrics, which their incessant use of the n-word, the b-word, the f-word, and descriptions and boasts about permutations of those three words, to be very offensive. I turned the radio on, as loud as it goes, hoping that I’d find something to drown out the other stuff. First song – Bohemian Rhapsody.

Great radio station, no?