Music plays an important role in lifting our hearts and minds to God — something we’re especially reminded of during these Advent and Christmas seasons.
But while there’s no replacement for seasonal hymns and carols like “Silent Night” or “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” I want to reflect on another and very different musical source of Christian contemplation: pop songs.
I’m not talking about contemporary praise and worship songs sung in the style of pop music. Nor am I talking about Christmas carols performed by otherwise mainstream pop musicians. I’m talking about the typical tunes you hear on the Top 40 list.
This might seem like a strange thing to focus on during Advent. After all, plenty of pop music does the exact opposite of contributing to the kind of pure and holy thoughts we should be cultivating during these weeks. And I am definitely not advocating replacing clear-cut Christian songs of worship and praise with mainstream mainstays, the musical equivalent of not going to Mass because you think you can commune with God just as well out in the forest.
But I think some pop songs can help us connect with God in a powerful way — independent of whether this is their intention, or whether they’re even sung by a believing Christian. And it’s all connected to the mystery we’re preparing to celebrate at Christmas: the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
At that first Christmas, God took on human flesh, becoming like us in all things but sin. Christ comes close to us, and he reveals himself, and the salvific union with God that he offers, as the desire of every human heart. Because of this, we can detect this longing for God — albeit in inchoate and incomplete form — even in pop music.
The 2010 hit song “Pursuit of Happiness” by Kid Cudi is a good illustration of this.
With its neo-psychedelic style and its lyrics about drinking and drug use, it’d be easy to superficially label the song as some kind of unapologetic, hedonistic “party anthem” — about as far from fodder for Christian thought as you can get.
In fact, one popular remix of the song interprets it as just that, basically reducing the whole track to an amped up repetition of a line that Cudi utters in the first verse in response to people telling him to “slow his roll”: “I’m screaming out (forget) that.”
“I’ma do just what I want, looking ahead no turning back,” the singer continues.
But the song is much deeper than this battle cry of irresponsibility and indulgence. As the track progresses, Cudi’s façade of carefree carousing gives way to revealing lines about the emptiness of this kind of pursuit of earthly pleasures. In fact, the song ends with a haunting outro, as the music becomes distorted and the consequences of the singer’s partying lifestyle begin to catch up with him in the form of nausea and disgust.
This experience of the futility of earthly comforts to provide true satisfaction is the key to understanding the entire song and its powerful refrain:
“I’m on the pursuit of happiness and I know
everything that shines ain’t always gonna be gold
Hey, I’ll be fine once I get it.
I’ll be good.”
What is the “it” that Cudi is talking about, that unknown that will bring him ultimate satisfaction? He doesn’t necessarily seem to know, but he knows he needs to continue to search for it and seek it out.
For those of us who’ve already encountered Christ, we know that he’s the answer. But we can also easily forget or take that for granted. Hearing about this longing for ultimate satisfaction from a secular, or at least not overly Christian point of view, can be a reminder that, by God’s grace, we’ve received the only thing that will truly satisfy, and the love that all mankind is looking for.
Not only can this be an aid to our own spiritual life, but it can also give us some insight into how to evangelistically reach out to a broken culture that is still searching for answers. A lot of pop music is downright bad, but on the occasions when it strikes upon something good and true, that can be the start of a conversation that leads further. As Paul tells the Thessalonians, “test everything, and retain what is good.”
In conclusion, I am not arguing that Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” is a properly Christmas song. I just want to suggest that the mystery of the Incarnation that we celebrate in a few short weeks helps shed light on the fact that helpful reminders of our need for Christ are all around us — even in pop music.
Liedl, a Twin Cities resident, is a senior editor of the National Catholic Register and a graduate student in theology at The St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul.
