Here are some of the bands, preformers, songs, and albums that the Watchtower Society has banned from it's members. See if you can spot your favorite!!
w93 2/22 25-27
Take heavy-metal music-a particularly noxious form of hard rock that is usually played at ear-splitting volume. Heavy-metal bands typically sport names like Poison, Skid Row, Guns N' Roses, and Slayer. Time magazine said: "The band names alone conjure up images of mayhem, torture and death." The same can be said of the horrifying artwork that adorns the album covers and that often depicts satanic symbols.
But what about the music itself? It features such titles as "Flesh and Blood" and "Appetite for Destruction" and has lyrics that glorify sadomasochism, rape, and murder. So it is not surprising that the heavy-metal music guide Stairway to Hell calls heavy metal "a triumph of vulgarity, velocity, verbal directness, violent apathy." Heavy-metal music has also repeatedly been linked to drug abuse, Satanism, and suicide among its listeners. Yet, according to media reports, heavy metal is winning a growing mainstream audience.
g93 2/8 15-17
Rap (or, hip-hop) reportedly became popular back in the 1970's in small New York City dance clubs frequented by inner-city youths. As disc jockeys began chanting rhymes (or, rapping) over a background of prerecorded percussion, dancers responded with near hysteria. Rap music soon moved from the streets and basement clubs to the musical mainstream. Rappers sporting names as brash as their music-Public Enemy, M. C. Hammer, and Vanilla Ice-were soon filling the airwaves with their thundering brand of music
w72 9/15 567-571
In virtually all rock 'n' roll dances done by youths, the partners do not touch. The twist is viewed by many as having been the beginning of this type of dancing. An interviewer for Look magazine reported awhile back:
"The characteristic dances of our new age of revelry are all variants of the twist. . . . The dancers do not touch, they do not talk. . . . Each does whatever charade the name of the dance calls for. . . . They look as if their bodies are screaming.
"'It's a kind of fertility rite, designed to combat the sterility of modern life,' says a young medical student, asked to account for his generation's dancing style. But this is fertility magic without bodily contact. . . . A student nurse . . . says, 'It's sort of sexy . . . all those bodies grinding, but never touching."'
w93 4/15 19-24
Another popular form of music is heavy metal. Heavy metal is more than high-decibel hard rock. Says a report in The Journal of the American Medical Association: "Heavy metal music . . . features a loud pulsating rhythm and abounds with lyrics that glorify hatred, abuse, sexual deviancy, and occasionally satanism." Why, the names alone of some of the more popular bands testify to the depravity of this brand of rock. They include such words as "poison," "guns," and "death." Yet, heavy metal seems fairly tame in comparison with thrash metal and death metal-fringe musical genres spawned by heavy metal. The names of these bands exploit terms like "cannibal" and "obituary." Youths in many lands may not realize how repulsive these names are because they are in English or another foreign language.
Do old Kingdom Songs stumble??
w86 10/15 21-24
In several instances a certain melody was given a new set of words that appeared to be more effective and useful. Song 60, "God's Kingdom of a Thousand Years," uses the melody of Song 86 in the previous songbook. The lyrics for Song 2, "Obeying God Rather Than Men," are an expansion of those of former Song 79. It seemed that this theme deserved a full page rather than a half page.
g92 7/8 31
Death Metal-What's the Message?A WILD-EYED, long-haired young man stands before an audience of cheering, chanting fans. He takes a bucketful of animal blood and entrails and dumps it over the first few rows. The fans laugh, wipe the stuff on themselves, and throw chunks at one another. This scene, according to Florida's St. Petersburg Times, took place at a rock concert by a band called Deicide, which means 'the killing of a god.' This kind of music is called death metal, supposedly the most extreme form of heavy-metal rock. In recent years it has become more popular in Florida and internationally, ever since the success of an album entitled Scream Bloody Gore, by a band called Death.The band Deicide is led by an avowed Satanist who claims to have hated God ever since a car accident left him with a J-shaped scar, which he is certain stands for either Jesus or Jehovah. He claims to hear voices urging him to kill himself, and he has burned a satanic symbol into his own forehead.Even the more mainstream heavy-metal groups purvey messages that are hardly less grotesque. Time magazine reported that the two record albums by the heavy-metal group Guns N' Roses sold over 1.5 million copies in three days. Yet, the albums continue what Time calls the band's "unrelentingly sexist and uncompromisingly violent lyrics" and "their forays into xenophobia, racism and sadomasochism." They also feature such themes as oral sex, homicide, and a profusion of profanities. Several chains of stores have refused to sell the records.
g79 2/8 20-24
To illustrate this, let's take a brief look at some very famous people who made music their main interest in life, sometimes to the neglect of other things that should have received more of their attention. Ludwig van Beethoven is looked on as one of the greatest composers of all time, yet we are told that he had a very disorderly personal life. Another, Franz Schubert, who is said to have composed one of the most beautiful symphonies of all times, once described himself as a very unhappy man.Nor do these emotional depressions belong only to artists of the past. The late Hank Williams, one of the most popular of Country and Western singers of his time, used to sing a religious song entitled "I Saw the Light." But, did he? On one occasion, after singing this song, he is reported to have burst out in tears and sobbed that he saw no light. His life ended tragically from an overdose of drugs, taken while en route to a singing engagement.
w71 7/1 403-404
WHAT KIND OF SONGS?
Youth is impatient, it lacks the wisdom that knowledge and years of experience often bring. It wants to try everything, and it wants to do it now. The popular songwriters and singers give youths what they want, or what they think they want, namely, sex, drugs and rebellion.
Romantic love has ever been one of the dominant themes of songs, but can today's 'love' songs that encourage loose conduct be termed romantic? There are songs with such words as "Let's spend the night together." "He'll hold you in his arms till you feel his disease." "Tonight I'm yours."
Drugs have been made very popular by modern singers. Thus, last October radio executives attending a White House conference on drug abuse were told to listen to the words of some of the songs sung over their own stations. Among the words they might have heard were: "I'm a real straightshooter, if you know what I mean." "One pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small, but the pill your mother gave you did nothing for you at all." Songs tell about taking a "trip" and use other language that unsuspecting parents would not recognize as having to do with drugs. Thus "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" refers to LSD.
Another theme with a bad effect that appeals to youths today is that of rebellion. Parents and police are ridiculed, taunted and mocked. Youths sing out: "We want the world and we want it NOW!" "We are the forces of chaos and anarchy."
w83 1/15 7-10
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.
g80 11/8 29-31
Canadian Rock Riot· When a crowd of about 14,000 rock fans in Toronto were advised that their idol, Alice Cooper, would not play at a scheduled "concert," they rioted. The angered crowd tore up bolted-down metal chairs and turnstiles, throwing them about, along with bottles and garbage cans. They set fires and battled hundreds of police. Said a press photographer on the scene: "There are windows broken everywhere [at the Canadian National Exhibition Coliseum and its grounds]. They destroyed several trucks, including a Pepsi-Cola truck that was turned over on its side, and every window was smashed in." Are these the kind of persons Christian youths should allow themselves to rub shoulders with in the name of "music"?-1 Cor. 15:33.
g91 3/8 31
In Florida, U.S.A., a court declared as obscene an album by the rock group 2 Live Crew that, according to one of its critics, contained "87 descriptions of oral sex, 116 mentions of male and female genitalia and other lyrical passages referring to male ejaculation." The court ruling was later appealed and reversed. However, a record-store owner was arrested and later found guilty and fined $1,000 on charges of obscenity for selling the album. His lawyers planned to appeal the case.