Hoodwinked By iTunes

I love iTunes. I recently was fortunate enough to win a free iPod mini, and find it to be just about the coolest thing in the world. I had tons of digital music on my hard drive, and if I wanted portability I was forced to tote my laptop around and plug headphones into it. Effective, yes, but not the best way to get the job done.

Each week, Apple puts a free single up in the itunes music store. This is a nice way to sample a new artist that you’ve likely never heard of, and if you like, maybe purchased some more music from them, or anyone else for that matter.

Anyway, the single of this week for this particular period was a song called “Let Go” by a group called BarlowGirl, who, surprise, I had not heard of. What the heck, let me take a chance. I grabbed the freebie song, listened to it, and immediately liked the guitar sound and the harmonies from the girls. Bear in mind I listened to it with the TV on, and two kids in the room, so I wasn’t able to detect the subtle nuances of the song, namely, any lyrics other than the chorus. I played it a ferw more times, and liked it more each time.

I did notice something odd when I saw the song in my iTunes list, though. Under “Genre”, where I expected to see something like “power pop” or “College” or something along those lines. This read “Inspirational”. Wha? I then popped in the ear buds and played the song, with no white noise or distractions. Holy crap, it’s freaking Christian Rock! The title refers to how the singer will “Let Go” and turn everything over to God.

Now, it would be terribly closed minded of me to dismiss a song outright because it was “Inspirational”, even though I have never made any attempt to listen to any of the various offshoots of Christian Music, from Stryper (remember them, the Christian Heavy Metal band?) to any other artists who exist outside the mainstream. I like this song, and since I am a Christian, really don’t have a problem with the message. What makes me think, however, is that nowhere in the description of the song on iTunes was it mentioned that this was an “Insprirational” song. I wonder how many people of other faiths grabbed the free download? I guess since the song never mentions which version of God things are being “Let Go” to, it can be used by just about any faith, and only an atheist would have a problem with it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple received a small number of complaints, though.

I guess I learned something. I'm not sure what, but it was something.