What musical groups or songs were bad according to JWs?

by Victorian sky 57 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • undercover
    undercover

    Basically, all of them.

    Lessee, ones that I remember being mentioned; The Beatles(used drugs, John shacked up with Yoko, the Jesus comment) The Stones(drugs, badboy image), Led Zeppelin(drugs, mysticism, Stairway played backwards said something or other), The Who(drugs, violence, Pete smashed guitars ya know), Black Sabbath(satanism), Bob Dylan(trouble maker), Fleetwood Mac(mysticism, drugs), Eageles(drugs, Hotel Calif. was satanic), Prince(sex), Queen(gay and backward masking), Huey Lewis(drugs), James Taylor(mental patient),KISS(Knights In Satan's Service), RUSH(Raised Under Satan's House), all Disco(sex), all Heavy Metal(violence), all Rap, Hip-Hop(sex, language, violence). There were many, many more.

    One funny one was a sister during the WT study on debasing music(for the umpteenth time) said that her daughter brought home an album by a band called 10,000 Maniacs. She made her get rid of it, because she wouldn't allow one maniac in her house, let alone 10,000. It kills me how people jump to conclusions. If she had bothered to listen to the album, I'm sure she wouldn't have minded. They were a pretty tame band, talented, but tame.

  • tinkerbell82
    tinkerbell82

    oh my god, remember "Color Me Badd" from the eighties??? me and my aunt (who's only a couple of years older than me) secretly bought their tape when we were kids and listened to "I Wanna Sex You Up" over and over again till we got caught and the tape got confiscated!! :P

  • dmouse
    dmouse

    Runningman, they weren't too keen on the Rolling Stones either:

    Watchtower 1983, 1/15, p. 8-9

    That comment about identification leads us to the crux of the matter. (Compare 1 Corinthians 15:32.) Should a genuine Christian want to identify with most of the trends in modern music? Recently the Toronto Star, a Canadian newspaper, reported: "Sex and sadism merge in the Tubes [San Francisco rock group] concert." The writer went on to comment: "What is social satire to The Tubes may be just plain sado-masochism, sex in bondage, profanity and perversion to anybody else." What can Christianity have in common with that?

    The New York Post carried an article entitled "Satanic World of the Rolling Stones." It was a full-page résumé of that group’s involvement in drugs. The Rolling Stones’ attitudes on drugs, sex and Satan come through loud and clear in their music. Can you harmonize with such attitudes and still identify with Christ?—2 Corinthians 6:14, 15.

  • drwtsn32
    drwtsn32

    Believe it or not, but Bon Jovi was specifically named by a local elder in a talk. He said JWs shouldn't listen to such 'mainstream rock.' WTF?!

    For the most part the music I liked wasn't prohibited. I wasn't into Heavy Metal or Rap... music that is singled out by the dubs and considered completely and utterly satanic.

    But Def Leppard kicks ass!! I kept that album while throwing out my Bon Jovi. Go figure!

  • RunningMan
    RunningMan

    The really cool thing is that a lot of those tunes (by the Stones, Led Zepellin and others) are still being played and enjoyed two, three, and even four decades later. But, where are the Society's publications after just a few years? - the junk heap.

  • stillajwexelder
    stillajwexelder

    The really cool thing is that a lot of those tunes (by the Stones, Led Zepellin and others) are still being played and enjoyed two, three, and even four decades later. But, where are the Society's publications after just a few years? - the junk heap. You are correct -- very ironic -- but I also seem to remember that certain classical stuff is bad -- Wagner is very "satanic" Norse Gods and myth etc. and wasnt Tchaichovsky (sorry about the spelling) homosexual -- I mean we could go on

  • dmouse
    dmouse

    To be fair, classical music wasn't exempt from the Fat Controllers' purview either:

    ***

    w83 1/15 p. 7 Music—Can It Be a Threat? ***

    Take as another example the works of the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler, now in vogue among classical music lovers. One musicologist speaks of this composer’s "obsession with death" and describes "the unremitting quest to discover some meaning in life that was to pervade Mahler’s life and music." Speaking of his Symphony No. 1, the writer describes its contents, saying: "The joy of life becomes clouded over by an obsession with death." He goes on to say: "Symphony No. 2 begins with the death obsession . . . and culminates in an avowal of the Christian belief in immortality. . . . The religious element in these works is highly significant." So now the question arises, Could Mahler’s religious confusion, obsessions and neurosis affect the listener?

    Another case is that of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. This ballet music represents a pagan rite in which a young virgin dances herself to death to propitiate the god of spring. This rite, as one commentator wrote, "is here expressed in music whose most immediately striking characteristic is its rhythmic power—the hypnotic, compulsive force of rhythmic patterns." The effect is startling and perhaps disquieting. In fact, "it was calculated to overthrow European certainties about musical tradition."

    So, even classical music should make you pause and ask yourself, Will excessive exposure to a certain type of music tend to depress me or overexcite me? Will the composer’s philosophy creep through and perhaps affect my thinking negatively? Of course, if his music does not undermine faith in the Creator and in His great works, the composer’s influence may turn out to be neutral or even very positive. Then again, it is possible to listen to music without ever knowing what the composer had in mind. In that case the meaning, if any, will depend entirely on the listener’s imagination.

  • Piph
    Piph

    At a DC here one year a teenage boy was doing a part with his father..the kid asked if he could go to a Nirvana concert and the father asked him what genre of music that was and the kid said, "Heavy metal." Then the father went into this lecture using lit. showing why we shouldn't listen to heavy metal... meanwhile I'm sitting there in the audience going, YOU IDIOT! You've just screwed Nirvana for tons of Witness kids!!!

  • 95stormfront
    95stormfront

    All the JW's I know are now swearing that Michael was most likely never a JW, that he's disfellowshipped and now marveling that Prince is now one of their brothers.

    I wonder how many of them are listening to any of his earlier music, getting an earful of such musical masterpieces as Do Me Baby, Jack U Off, Gett Off, Darling Nikki, or Sexy Muthafucka.

  • Euphemism
    Euphemism
    the kid asked if he could go to a Nirvana concert and the father asked him what genre of music that was and the kid said, "Heavy metal."

    Don't they know the difference between Heavy Metal and Grunge?

    I think that any rock that was considered too 'hard' got lumped under "heavy metal."

Share this

Google+
Pinterest
Reddit