{"id":15423,"date":"2011-11-09T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T14:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christandpopculture.com\/?p=15423"},"modified":"2012-10-09T11:59:08","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T17:59:08","slug":"music-at-mars-hill-a-closer-look-at-mylo-xyloto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/2011\/11\/music-at-mars-hill-a-closer-look-at-mylo-xyloto\/","title":{"rendered":"Music at Mars Hill: A Closer Look at Mylo Xyloto"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Music at Mars Hill<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0is a weekly column by Luke Larsen that seeks to find God amidst the newest trends in both mainstream music and independent music.<\/em><\/p>\n

I previously wrote a bit of a rant here on Music at Mars Hill on why Coldplay<\/a> was moving closer and closer to populist ambiguity when they released their EP leading up to Mylo Xyloto<\/em>. And now that we\u2019ve got the full album, there\u2019s been a lot of talk about the thing (as is to be expected in a Coldplay release). A recent article over at ThinkChristian<\/a> talks about how the album is a love-story of sorts and should inspire Christians to be vulnerable and willingly offer ourselves to others.<\/p>\n

I recently tried out a new church close to where I recently moved. Each week I\u2019ve gone, Coldplay\u2019s Mylo Xyloto<\/em> has consistently been the music playing in the background before the service started. While it\u2019s important to remember that the meeting is a twentysomethings-oriented group, I\u2019ll admit that there is something fitting about the sounds of Chris Martin and company blasting through the church speakers.\u00a0To many, particularly young Christians, albums like Viva La Vida<\/em> and Mylo Xyloto<\/em> have become the new go-to for those who have moved on past the shrinking pool that is CCM (Contemporary Christian Music).\u00a0Despite the fact that Chris Martin is a self-proclaimed \u201cAlltheist\u201d (a made-up term meaning that he believes everything), when he sings about paradise, heaven, and being an inheritor of a kingdom, Christians have been singing along.\u00a0But what is it about Coldplay, especially in their past two albums, that rings so true with Christians?<\/p>\n

The more I listened to Mylo Xyloto<\/em>, the more I began to see that Coldplay was picking up on many of the same things CCM had been emphasizing for so long. Pitchfork<\/a> recently published a fascinating feature on why \u201cBig Music,\u201d or epic stadium-sized rock, has taken the rhetoric of Christianity and spirituality to make something accessible to our secularized culture:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I see religious art, I tend to admire it but not connect with it on any gut emotional level. As an atheist, I see a stained-glass apocalypse, and I can coolly reconstruct the awe, excitement, and fear that might have bubbled up in the medieval mind. But I can\u2019t feel it. And the same\u2014for all its beauty\u2014goes for gospel. But the Big Music\u2014deploying the emotion of religion within an aesthetic I do relate to\u2014can sometimes push buttons I don\u2019t necessarily want pushed. At its frequent worst, it triggers the same disgusted flight-impulse a TV preacher might. At its rare best, though, it makes me want to believe.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, when you hear artists like Florence + The Machine<\/a> or Coldplay reference Christian themes or act as \u201cBig Music,\u201d they definitely are not doing it to pander to Christians. Instead, in the same way they use references to other genres, they are using that same rhetoric to achieve a parallel spiritual\/musical experience for people that would otherwise rejects such notions. There is a reason Coldplay chose the nonsensical word \u201cMylo Xyloto\u201d for the name of their new album; its literal meaning is left empty to emphasize the grandness of its scope that all people can relate to. For us as Christians, it\u2019s okay for us to let Coldplay and other \u201cBig Music\u201d point us to the grand, epic, and massive thing it is imitating.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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