Praising the power of music

Music--I doubt I could survive life without it. There's nothing quite like sitting in a church on Sunday morning, listening to the congregation around you sing in four-part harmony, a variety of hymns.

That old Mennonite tradition, 606 (also known as "Praise God From Whom"), makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up every time. What power those words and that melody have over us!

Music has touched my life like few other things have. No matter the emotion or experience I'm going through, there's a place in music I can turn to. You can bet that when I'm feeling uninspired I crank up U2's "The Joshua Tree" and I'm sure to feel like climbing a mountain just to yell from the top. When I'm feeling good I can usually get the endorphins running with some Blink-182 or old school Michael Jackson, a la "Thriller." And when I'm just feeling down, I put on some Coldplay or Death Cab For Cutie.

If I long to feel good about life, I crank up the Beatles' classic "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

The iPod has revolutionized the way the world, especially our generation, responds to music. Traditionally, when an album is released it is preceded by a radio single. In the case of Coldplay's CD "X & Y," the song "Speed of Sound" was released and began radio rotation on April 18, nearly two months before the album was released.

The single is left to travel as high up the Billboard Radio Charts, which measure the number of spins a song receives on radio nationwide, as possible. Once it reaches its zenith (in Coldplay's case, #8) and begins the drop down the chart, a new single is released ("Fix You").

What arguably results from this system is that three or four songs from a given CD end up being known popularly, and the rest are forgotten.

The iPod has seemed to buck this trend. With the incredible iTunes Music Store, music fans can purchase a single song for 99 cents. Whole albums are typically sold for $9.99.

To me, this is incredible. Not only can I legally download music right from the comfort of my home, I can also pick only the content I want. This means I don't have to buy a whole album for three good songs and twelve scrubby ones.

I find tremendous pleasure in compiling mixes of the best songs by my favorite bands and, using iTunes, it's as easy as clicking and dragging. The mixes are saved to my iPod and I can listen to them whenever I want.

I listen to the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," which fades into U2's "City of Blinding Lights" before cuts from The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, The White Stripes, Gorillaz, and Cake. Jack Johnson mourns the absence of "Good People." Snow Patrol sings about "Chocolate" and Embrace spreads their "Ashes" until the Beatles boast how things keep "Getting Better." Modest Mouse's "Float On" sets up All American Rejects' "Move Along" and The Killers' "All These Things I've Done." It all finishes with Coldplay's "Fix You" and Joe Purdy's "Wash Away."

I can write the soundtrack to my life, and take it with me wherever I go.

I feel the same the same rush of energy when I'm standing in church on a Sunday morning singing about the blessings that flow from God as I do listening to Bono sing about longing for a place "where the streets have no name."

The desires of the heart are expressed, and whenever that happens, you can bet the hairs on the back of my neck are going to stand up.