It's in the Mix - Music and Your Teenager

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It's in the Mix:

Music and Your Teenager

by

Mike Nappa

"I never really thought that being obnoxious would get me to where I am now," says Billie Joe Armstrong, the front man for mainstream alternative band, Green Day. Together with his bandmates, he routinely fills 15,000 seat stadiums and has sold millions of records to date. "When I play, I’m not a nice guy," he continues. "You know, when you get really drunk, and it’s like this person inside you that wants to come out and be obnoxious? It’s that same kind of thing. And then people like you for it. I don’t get that."

A lot of Green Day’s fans are teenagers, and like Billie Joe, their parents don’t "get that" either. After all, why would kids like yours want to listen to music that even its creator calls obnoxious? In fact, why do teenagers need music in the first place? Why do parents and teenagers often disagree about music? And what can parents and teenagers do to reach a middle ground?

The answers to questions like these aren’t always obvious, but that doesn’t mean we can simply ignore the questions. Let’s see what we can discover as we attempt to answer them now.

Why Do Teenagers Need Music?

There’s no denying the fact that music has power in a teenager’s life. Kurt Cobain was the 27-year-old lead singer for the mainstream group, Nirvana. When he committed suicide, thousands of teenagers gathered in candlelight vigils to mourn his death.

Christian music artist, Cindy Morgan, tells why. "Kids are influenced by what they listen to," she says. Then, commenting on studies done by youth culture specialist, Bob DeMoss, Morgan reveals an even more tragic result of Nirvana’s music. "After the Kurt Cobain suicide, there were several teenagers who committed suicide [too] and who left suicide notes that said, ‘I wanted to go like Cobain.’"

Just as music can influence kids in negative ways, music has power to bring teenagers new hope. John Cox is a relatively new name in Christian music, but his songs and lyrics are already making an impact on eternity. A group of six people picked up his CD, Sunny Day, to take along on a road trip. They listened to the album over and over until they reached their destination. By the end of that trip, four of the six had been so moved by Cox’s music, they had decided to become Christians.

Dez Dickerson knows the power of both mainstream and Christian music. During the early 80s, he achieved success as guitarist and background vocalist for the artist formerly known as Prince. After becoming a Christian, Dickerson moved into Christian music, and recently founded his own Christian music company, Absolute Records.

"Music can express some things that teenagers feel inadequate or unable to communicate effectively themselves," says Dickerson. "Music is the only thing that can impact man on all three levels of his existence: spiritual, mind, and body. [For teenagers], it’s the kind of thing where they can become empathetic with the artist or the communicator and feel, ‘This record speaks for me.’"

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Although he’s not necessarily a Christian, Sid Holt (managing editor of the influential mainstream music magazine, Rolling Stone) agrees with Dickerson. "I think that rock-n-roll, in at least one sense, is a search for meaning in our lives," Holt says. "And that’s partly what religion is about."

Holt’s counterpart at the popular Christian music magazine, CCM, is April Hefner. She adds "Like most artistic expression, [music] is a mirror of who we are and a lens to what we might dream of being. Teens need music to give voice to the thoughts and feelings they are unable to verbalize."

Why ...

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