So I spent the majority of my Christmas iTunes on Mute Math’s album. That means I had an extra five songs to get.

A recent conversation about different types of music in church services got me thinking that most people pick one or two styles of music that define their musical tastes and stick with those. While I can’t really put my finger on what causes various musical preferences, I think it would help if people opened up their listening opportunities to various types of music and learned the different aspects to appreciate in each genre.

I saw a VH1 reality show a long time ago that got older musically inclined folks to try and do Welcome To The Jungle by Guns’n'Roses. Then they got some younger musically inclined folks to do some Glenn Miller big band tunes. Both groups realized that it’s not nearly as easy to do as they assumed and were wrong to discredit the different genres.

So back to iTunes, I just used my five leftover credits to get the following:

• Watermelon Crawl : Tracy Byrd : Country
• Three Little Birds : Bob Marley & The Wailers : Reggae
• Lay It Down : Ratt : Heavy Metal/Glam Rock
• Don’t Close Your Eyes : Keith Whitley : Country
• Elegantly Wasted : INXS : Pop/Rock

I am interested in getting some Joshua Bell (Classical/violin) next time I get enough for an entire album. Maybe next Christmas.