100 Things I Would Rather Listen To at Mass than Hymns from the 70’s and 80’s, In No Particular Order

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A brilliant friend of mine pointed out that “We Are Called and Gifted By Our God,” “Gather Us In,” “On Eagle’s Wings,” etc. are basically the Catholic, musical equivalent of Thomas Kinkade: bad art enjoyed primarily by old people. (Source).

  1. Gregorian Chant
  2. Byzantine Chant
  3. Old Roman Chant
  4. Ambrosian Chant
  5. Mozarabic Chant
  6. Hildegard Von Bingen
  7. Palestrina
  8. Thomas Tallis
  9. Bruckner
  10. John Tavener
  11. John Taverner
  12. Henryk Gorecki
  13. Arvo Part
  14. Ralph Vaughan Williams
  15. Old Negro Spirituals
  16. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir
  17. Appalachian Shape-Note Singing
  18. Mongolian Throat Singing
  19. Swedish Black Metal
  20. Broadway Showtunes
  21. Spanish Versions of Broadway Showtunes
  22. Esperanto Versions of Broadway Showtunes
  23. Crappy Bootlegged Esperanto Versions of Broadway Showtunes
  24. DMX
  25. Patsy Cline
  26. Irish Folk Ceol
  27. The Game of Thrones Theme Song
  28. Melanie Martinez
  29. All 7 Hours of a Castro Speech
  30. Chris Tomlin (shudder)
  31. YouTube videos about Fitness
  32. RuPaul’s Drag Race
  33. “Shall We Gather at the River?”
  34. David Lynch Cooking Quinoa
  35. Schoenberg
  36. That Weird Russian Guy Who Dances and Makes That Noise with his Lips (you know the one)
  37. The Interviews of Edward Gorey
  38. The Collected Works of Charles Dickens Played Backwards
  39. Machine Metal Music
  40. The Sound of Two Hundred Bees Copulating Simultaneously
  41. A Giant Saw Cutting Off California from the Rest of the Union
  42. Musique concrète
  43. Dissertation Defenses by Statistics Ph.D’s
  44. Mark Zuckerberg (shudder)
  45. The Sound Made by Nikita Kruschev’s Shoe on the Podium, But on Infinite Loop
  46. The Sound Made by Justin Trudeau When He Announced The Year as If It Mattered, But on Infinite Loop
  47. Cats
  48. Ayn Rand Interviews
  49. Vaporwave Remixes of Ayn Rand Interviews
  50. Vaporwave Anything, Really
  51. “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life!”
  52. Mr. G’s Dance from Summer Heights High
  53. A Theory of Justice: The Musical
  54. “Universal Love, Said the Cactus Person”
  55. The Ambient Sounds Recorded at the Varsity in Atlanta
  56. Twelve Germans Arguing About Philology
  57. John Oliver
  58. Ethel Merman
  59. Untranslated Korean Horror Movies
  60. Buskers in the Tube
  61. Robert Nozick Gently Asking Me to Kill 10,000 Contented Cows
  62. Gypsy Music
  63. Fleet Foxes (actually this would be pretty great and like the only good “folk mass” conceivable in any way, shape, or form)
  64. “The Sash”
  65. Ambient Noise Recorded at the Louvre
  66. The Sound of Praying Mantises Fighting Each Other
  67. The Sound of Praying Nuns Fighting Each Other
  68. The Sound of Music
  69. Oral Histories of the Tennessee Valley Authority
  70. Smash Mouth
  71. The Collected Oeuvre of Insane Clown Posse
  72. Gargling
  73. Untranslatable Russian Poetry
  74. Donald Trump (shudder)
  75. Gordon Ramsay Insulting Hell’s Kitchen Contestants
  76. Hideous Yak Noises
  77. The Broken Wind of an Unusually Flatulent Old Vicar in Surrey
  78. Lobsters
  79. Tracey Emin Talking About Her Work As If It Mattered
  80. That Flute Played by Mr. Tumnus
  81. Road Rage
  82. Chevy Chase Reciting Edward Lear
  83. “Your Mom Goes to College”
  84. Lobsters, but Fighting
  85. Gilbert Gottfried Reciting The Faerie Queene
  86. “Just You…And I…Just You…And I…”
  87. The Unrestrained Moans of Passion from the Majestic Wombat in Rut
  88. All the Burps from Arlo: The Burping Pig
  89. All the Burps from Arlo Guthrie Over His Entire Life
  90. “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” On A Day Other Than Thanksgiving
  91. This List, Recited in Swahili
  92. Little Jimmy Scott
  93. The National Anthem of the USSR
  94. “MacArthur Park” (the original, performed by Richard Harris)
  95. Cardinal Richelieu as Petula Clark
  96. A Medley from Die Dreigroschenoper
  97. Mark Gormley’s “Without You”
  98. A Headline Act from Branson
  99. Wing’s cover of “Dancing Queen”
  100. Silence

9 thoughts on “100 Things I Would Rather Listen To at Mass than Hymns from the 70’s and 80’s, In No Particular Order

    • No. 100, Silence, should be at the head of the list, for all the others depend upon it. Cardinal Sarah’s book on silence is the most profound and persuasive argument.

      Liked by 1 person

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  4. You probably hate Graham Kendrick’s hymn ‘Shine Jesus, Shine’ but I would recommend having a look at the lyrics. They are quite theologically rich for such a sentimental song from a sentimental era.

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