Gosh, I like Tommy Roe!
But why?
Well, partly, because his songs are catchy and sweet, and especially “Everybody” (1963). But “Dizzy” (1969) also makes me… dizzy.
The real reason a person likes a song — or really likes a song — is that it speaks for them. Or speaks to them. Or speaks from them.
The song “resonates”, to use the idiom, with you.
In other words, it’s not just the song. It’s the part of you that connects to the song.
All these things we like so much (i.e., pop songs, videos, movies, novels, television shows, poems, paintings) draw something out of us. Yes, they are apt “hooks”, for something inside us. But the bigger part of the transaction is the soul of me that I am hanging on the hook.
This cast talks about the “me” part — while all the time loving Tommy Roe!
Don’t objectify. Enjoy the object, but listen for the subject.
Oh, and the second part of the cast, which I’m not going to preview here,
is summed up in Tom Jones’s immortal song — or rather, mortal song — “Green, Green Grass of Home” (1967).
Put that in your pipe and…
This podcast is dedicated to Ray Ortlund.