This article originally appeared in print journal May/June 2002.

Messages of hope and redemption took center stage at this year’s Grammy Awards telecast, which featured performances by U2, gospel musicians, and some of the artists connected to the surprisingly popular O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack. But elsewhere, songs of hopelessness and rage were getting all the attention. Spin magazine’s January issues focused on “The Year in Music” and featured U2 on the cover. But inside, a major article declared that songs of “primal discontent” by bands like Staind and Slipknot represented the “trend of the year.”

And in March, Entertainment Weekly reviewed new releases by Puddle of Mudd, Hoobastank, and other bands, saying that “grudge” rock had replaced “grunge” rock.

“Everywhere is a bleak, ink-black hole of loneliness, pain, rejection and two-faced friends (both of them),” wrote EW‘s David Browne in an article entitled “Whine Sellers.”

Both articles provide interesting perspectives on contemporary music that youth workers shouldn’t ignore.

“The Bleakest Year in Rock History”
The Spin article was entitled “Hell is for Children” and focused on themes of dysfunction and despair that are increasingly common. Writer Jon Dolan opened his article with a description of a performance by million-selling Disturbed, a band whose name seems to say it all.

“David Draiman…opened his set by fake-electrocuting himself a la Alice Cooper, but there was little of Cooper’s kitschy self-awareness when he snarled: ‘No, Mommy, don’t do it again. I’ll be a good boy. I’ll be a good boy, I promise. No, Mommy, don’t hit me. You’re hurting me. Why do you have to be such a bit**?'”

Dolan also quoted the sentiments of front man Kud of the band Mudvayne (“It’s really hard to be a young man or a young lady today”) and the lyrics of the Papa Roach song “Broken Home” (“My wounds are not healing/I am stuck in between my parents/I wish I had someone to talk to”).

As Dolan puts it, “2001 was perhaps the bleakest year in rock history, as a mass of motherless mooks rose up and yowled, in the words of Linkin Park, ‘Shut up while I’m talking to you!'”

Depressed and depressing bands like Staind, Slipknot, System of a Down, Drowning Pool, Korn, Rage Against the Machine, and Suicidal Tendencies seem to support Dolan’s argument.

EW‘s David Browne summarized the worldview found in the lyrics of some of the most popular rage rockers: “Every day is the same old gauntlet of abject, intense, horrid torment from which there is no escape. Even worse, no one listens. Your friends can’t be trusted or counted on. The ones you thought loved you, in fact, don’t. Even when you go back home, the old aggravations haunt you. Your parents still don’t understand.”

Musically, Browne said the following were some of the genre’s identifying characteristics: “Each band is fronted by a wailing-wall singer who repeatedly tells us how anguished he is; each band unleashes a barrage of oppressive sound that’s as generic as store-brand canned vegetables. Each band uses the Nirvana formula—soft verses giving way to jet-blast choruses….And each album is utterly numbing.”

Before you let such music overwhelm you and drag you off into you own little pool of moroseness, let’s consider two important points:

Nihilistic Music Is Nothing New
Remember a British band named Pink Floyd? Their 1979 album “The Wall” was a double album that Rolling Stone magazine called a “four-sided scream of alienation” that “took interpersonal pessimism and cultural despair—and a morbid preoccupation with madness that has haunted Pink Floyd for 15 years—to astonishing extremes.”

“The Wall” was the best-selling album of 1980 and was made into a 1982 film that featured scenes of war, carnage, street violence, loneliness, maggots, impersonal sex, dead rats, rape and crawling flesh.

Pink Floyd’s equally stark 1973 album, “Dark Side of the Moon,” is one of the best-selling rock records in history.

Earlier still, one of the all-time classics of nihilistic rock was King Crimson’s “Epitaph,” which included this rousing chorus:

“Confusion will be my epitaph
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can sit back and laugh
But I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying”

Was 2001 really “the bleakest year in rock history”? I doubt it. That doesn’t mean we should ignore today’s nihilistic rock, but it does mean we should avoid embracing alarmist responses that are all too common in evangelical circles.

Too often, evangelical leaders exclaim that American culture has never been as bad as it is now (some promise they can make things all better, and even include a postage-paid envelope so you can send them a check).

But Western culture struggled with nihilism and other pessimistic world views during much of the 20th century, and many British thinkers such as J.R.R. Tolkien saw the two world wars and the Holocaust as signs that the modern world was at a kind of cultural cul-de-sac.

Pop Culture’s Messages Matter.
Just because these ideas have been around for a century doesn’t mean they aren’t important for your kids and for you.

Some of the young people you work with may not know anything about old bands like Pink Floyd or the work of 20th-century thinkers like Sartre or Camus. But they know they can relate to the music of Staind or System of a Down.

Pop culture can have a profound impact in young people’s lives. It may help them express emotions that can otherwise be murky at best and possibly even help them construct the foundations of a simple worldview.

Those who get their worldview from rage rock will probably conclude that life sucks. End of story.

Christian theology has a different approach that might be summarized as follows: Sure, life sucks, but God’s in control, and in some mysterious but real way, there’s still hope.

Christianity isn’t evasive about how messed up the world is, even though some believers are. Sin and evil are real, and their effects can be devastating, from generation to generation.

When young people see their parents divorce, or when they experience emotional or sexual abuse, it seems logical for them to conclude that the universe is cold, and God—if such a being even exists—is powerless and aloof.

That’s the message that comes across loud and clear in some of today’s most emotionally powerful music, and it’s no surprise that this message connects with many of the people who hear it.

But that’s not the whole story, and if another message is going to get through, you may be the person who has to find compassionate and creative ways of delivering it.