Yet must one imagine, from time to time, that God does indeed take some interest in the whole business: music, I mean. It is no exaggeration to say that music has played a central role in every major religion past or present, and the scriptures of the world practically teem with musical metaphor. The history of American popular music, in many ways, is a story of our growth as a nation: one which, taken as a single narrative, makes constant reference to what we disingenuously think of as our Christian beginnings while describing an angle that proceeds unmistakably away from any religious reference. That feel-good God-as-I-understand-Him AA platitudes vastly outnumber any recognizable statements of doctrine in pop music is no accident. Churches were right to fear Elvis and to shun the Beatles: they'd heard which way all this stuff was probably headed. Pop music prefers indistinct gods whose true natures resemble...itself.