We’re doing a series in High School Sunday School called Billboard Top Hits. Youth are able to vote one week for one of six songs, all at the top of a different Billboard Music Chart. In addition to looking at themes brought out by the music, we’re trying to teach our youth to be discerning when they listen to music or consume other forms of media.
The first week we did it, we looked at You Found Me by The Fray. We used this excellent Bible Study from St. Thomas the Apostle Life Teen. It’s amazing how much the story parallels Job’s experience with life.
This past week we looked at Dead and Gone by T. I. Lots of great stuff to examine in that song also, even though the lyrics have lots of ****’s in them. You can hear the song on Grooveshark if you’d like, then follow along with the study we did.
Up next: Know Your Enemy by Green Day.
You can get many more Music Studies by subscribing to Interlinc’s YLO (http://www.interlinc-online.com/) music subscription. Its about $300 for the year, BUT you get quarterly boxes which include on average about 8 CDs, 4 DVDs (music videos and more), and the accompanying magazine/books to go along with the CDs. Its about $6 per CD, an OUTSTANDING amazing deal. YLO creates the music studies from the CDs you receive quarterly. I just tweak them for online use. But you can actually use them in your church program. It’s all laid out.
I highly recommend getting YLO! My teens love getting the new music every few months and they love the music studies. I don’t have to argue anymore about what we’re going to listen to during Sunday dinner.
The Fray’s music study came from Source4YM.com
@Deepa: Thanks for stopping by! I’ve had Interlinc in the past, but I found it wasn’t worth continuing because we didn’t use the material to its fullest. We spend four weeks on this series, but we have lots of other stuff to get to in a year. Maybe I’ll give them another look though.
hey Jason – check out Planetwisdom.com as a resource for this series. Their content will definitely tie in nicely for what you’re doing!
@Phil: Thanks for the resource. Looks like some good stuff there!