I read the article that Kyle posted, and like Derek, I had to take some time to consider it before commenting. It started off with a notion that it is easy to accept - the fact that we are bombarded with music on a near-continual basis. Fair enough, although it's not something that particularly bothers me. My particular pet peeve is not being forced to listen to snippets of songs that I don't particularly like, but rather being forced to listen to the same song repeatedly, whether I like it or not. But from there, the author expands his rant into something much more fundamental - the primary theme seems to be that the lack of a shared world and spiritual view diminishes everything, and music is simply the example that he's holding up. In this, I disagree wholeheartedly. The only reason that there was a shared world view in Beethoven's time was because they lacked any means of communicating with all of those people in Africa, Asia and the Americas who had decidedly different perspectives. But why should the variety and complexity of philosophical and theological viewpoints (even including apathy and agnosticism) damage music? Given his premise that music evokes emotions directly, rather than through any process of rational thought or meaning, why does the fact that you and I appreciate the same piece of music from fundamentally different perspectives somehow cause that enjoyment to become decadent instead of transcendent? And I must also say that I don't agree with his contention that music and message don't work well together. I don't think Leonard Cohen would agree that his poetry of a "lower class" simply because he put it to music. Nor do I think that the Ostrich song is the best example of a Lou Reed lyric. I've always gravitated to the lyric content in music, and the ability to intertwine meaningful words with evocative melodies and harmonies is what satisfies me the most. I think that the author is indulging in the all-too-common bemoaning of the present state of society as compared with some illusory ideal past. He's only using music as an example so that he can show off his admitedly impressive knowledge of pop culture and musical history.