Music

$5 Albums for March 2012

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Another month full of great $5 albums. Here are my favorites. Check out all of Amazon's $5 albums for March.

Music Monday 2.27.12

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STREAMING FREE

New Josh Ritter video for "Love Is Making It's Way Back Home," created with 12,000 pieces of construction paper. Pretty awesome. Find it on Josh's new EP, Bringing In The Darlings.

Once Soundtrack | $3.99

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Once Soundtrack might be the best soundtrack ever, and it's $3.99 today only. Glen Hansard (of The Frames) & Markéta Irglová star in the movie and create the music. If you need convincing, here are two of my favorite songs, "Leave" (live, Hansard) and "Lies" (via the Soundtrack, from both artists). Consider yourself convinced.

Music Monday 2.20.12

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Streaming FREE

Some good stuff burning up my iPod right now. If my Dre Beats could talk. Reformissionary Recommends...

Also check out February's $5 albums.

Music Monday | The Grammys 2012

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Adele

I watched The Grammys last night. Yeah, the entire thing. Didn't plan to or expect to. Honestly, I didn't want to. But somehow I did. I think it was the opening set with Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band and a fantastic number from Bruno Mars that kinda hooked me. Plus my wife was begging to see Jennifer Hudson's tribute to Whitney, and that was way into the night.

I enjoyed it, generally. Foo Fighters sounded annoyingly pitchy (& I like them), Chris Brown was mostly a bore, Nicki Minaj was trying to be creative and provocative, but ended up trying too hard & failing. Otherwise, I enjoyed the Best New Artist win by Bon Iver and the awkward "acceptance" speech (also winning Best Alt Music Album). The brief version of "Barton Hollow" by The Civil Wars was some of the best music played all night and they pulled in a couple of Grammys.

Adele was wonderful, and post-surgery victorious with a powerful performance and arms loaded with awards. Colplay + Rihanna was a match made in purgatory (as was Tony Bennett & Carrie Underwood), but Coldplay's anthemic "Paradise" was excellent and my kids loved it (buy the song for $0.59 if you don't want the entire Mylo Xyloto). Mumford & Sons went home empty-handed, but you don't have to: Sigh No More is only $3.99 today. The Beach Boys big tribute thingy with Levine & Foster the People? Meh. 

There was a bunch of other stuff too, but I'm not doing a big recap. Just wanted to share a few thoughts on what they want us to believe is "music's biggest night." It was bigger and better than usual, but still, most the best stuff out there isn't on pop radio or at The Grammys. But it's still worth talking about.

Bon Iver Plays "Perth" With The Roots on Fallon

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Oh dear, this is good. Bon Iver plays "Perth" with The Roots. Gorgeous. For haters of the abuse of autotune (like me), this is how you take someone with a really good voice and use autotune to tweak the feel of a voice/song for the art of it, rather than to use it to make people think you are a better singer than you are. This is also how you take the already-awesome of a song and make it more awesome...play with The Roots. After watching, go buy Bon Iver, Bon Iver. I'm not sure how you can resist!

$5 Albums for February 2012

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Here are the $5 albums for February I recommend you check out. Check out all 100 and let me know what you like that I missed.

Soma School: Aaron Spiro

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Many of you know that I've been gone for a week at Soma School in Tacoma, Washington. I'm probably going to have several posts coming to share my experiences, what I learned, resources, etc. Never experienced anything like it. I wanted to start with a few resources from Aaron Spiro, the worship leader at Soma Communities. He served us well and serves Tacoma well.

Name Your Price (or FREE!)

Other Albums

If you need more than just my recommendation, watch this..."

Stephen Miller: God & Sinner Reconcile

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I get excited thinking about the direction some are taking with worship music. While there's a glut of stuff out there that all sounds the same to me and that I just can't listen to, there's a new breed of creative, biblical/theological worship guys at solid churches who are changing the game. I want to do what I can to encourage the creation of new, good worship music. Some of the music I've pointed to before includes Sojourn, Bifrost Arts, Aaron Ivey, Joe Day, Page CXVI, and others. Today I want to introduce you to someone who may be new to you.

Stephen Miller, worship leader at The Journey church in St. Louis, has a new worship album out today: God & Sinner Reconcile. I've been enjoying it for a couple of weeks. It's entered the rotation of music for personal worship as well as what we listen to on Sunday morning as a family before gathering with the church. I've also shared it with our worship leaders. I hope many of my readers will check it out and pick it up.

Check out Stephen Miller's website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed. Then grab a copy of God & Sinner Reconcile. It's only $6.99!