30 Days of Writing: Your views on mainstream music

Kelly: For the most part, I don't listen to mainstream music anymore. It's not what it used to be, and to be honest 99.9% of the time I find it disgusting to listen to. I can barely get through a mainstream radio station without lyrics involving sex, taking clothes off, "bumping a ho" or whatever. HACK!!! And then the rest of it I find to be just obnoxious. Yet this is what young children are "into" these days; as for me I like K-LOVE and Air1. Much safer and definitely friendlier on the ears! :)

When I think about the type of music I listened to while growing up, I think about what my dad would play. Bob Marley, Dire Straits, Steve Miller Band, all those. Then of course I listened to N'SYNC and Backstreet Boys as a kid. And now? Now we've got "Beliebers," Nicki Minaj (uh...REALLY?!) and in my opinion just really gross and distasteful music. It makes me wonder why this paradigm shift of music has occurred. Who started it?!

Holly: In general, I'm not a fan.  Granted, I do work at Old Navy and hear the same obnoxious pop music about 389230 times a week, so it's hard for it not to get stuck in your head.  I do have a playlist on Spotify with music such as this; call it a "guilty pleasure", if you will.  But most of what we hear now on the radio is either screechy (as my mom would say), involves artists that do nothing but autotune themselves, nothing but the same words over and over and over again, has so much bass that you practically go deaf, or every word is "eff this", n-word that, ho this, "bumpin' and grindin'"....I mean, KIDS listen to this stuff!  I'm horrified by some of the stuff I hear on mainstream stations.  Horrified.

I prefer to listen to Christian music.  And no, it's not just because I'm a Christian, although that is a part of it. I prefer it because it's uplifting, it's encouraging, it makes me happy and want to sing along to praise God...it's a booster shot, if you will.  :)  Now don't get me wrong, I do have some mainstream stuff on my iPod, but in general, I will listen to Christian music.  Or acoustic-y, guitar-y, pretty stuff.  Give me Mumford and Sons or Chris Tomlin any day of the week!