The Holy See’s Top 10 albums of all time

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/vatican-declares-there-is-a-rock-god/story-e6frg6so-1225830668046

The Beatles are No 1 on the Holy See’s list of top 10 albums

IT seems unlikely that the Pope, known for his love of Mozart and who once described rock music as the work of the devil, enjoys Carlos Santana’s Black Magic Woman or Oasis’s Wonderwall on an iPod in the privacy of his study.

But yesterday, the Vatican gave its imprimatur not only to Santana and Oasis, but also to the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Paul Simon, U2, Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac in a list of approved pop albums published in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.

Last year, the Vatican advised the faithful which films to watch, finding merit even in Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. This year, because Europe faced a season of mediocre songs at music festivals, the newspaper explained, it was time to recommend an antidote in the form of classic pop milestones.

The Holy See’s Top 10 includes the 1982 album Thriller by Jackson, the video for which shows the late singer as a zombie dancing with other ghouls in a graveyard, and Pink Floyd’s meditation on time, death, mental illness and consumer greed, The Dark Side of the Moon.

The Beatles also make the list with Revolver, perhaps their most drugs-influenced, psychedelic album from 1966. In the song Eleanor Rigby, Father McKenzie writes “the words of a sermon that no one will hear”.

Also given approval is U2′s album Achtung Baby from 1991, on which Bono sings in Acrobat: “I’d break bread and wine if there was a church I could receive in.”

As for Oasis, the Gallagher brothers — “enfants terribles of the working class”, the newspaper said — had given the world a “jewel produced by torment” in their 1995 album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory.

The article by Giuseppe Fiorentino and Gaetano Vallini, who recently wrote that Bono was a “true crusader for Christianity”, said: “To single out 10 classic discs . . . is no easy enterprise.” But they had no hesitation in starting with Revolver, “issued by the Fab Four long ago in 1966″ and a “point of no return in contemporary . . . pop music”.

L’Osservatore Romano recently absolved John Lennon of his notorious boast that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”, saying this was “merely like the boasting of an English, working-class lad struggling to cope with unexpected success”.

Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours remained a “fascinating musical soap opera”, the newspaper said. And in 1999′s Supernatural, Santana had shown he was “the only member of the Woodstock generation still at the top”. Bob Dylan — who sang for Pope John Paul II in 1997 at the World Eucharistic Festival in Bologna — was not included, the newspaper said, partly because his “visionary poetry” had turned “messianic” after his conversion to Christianity, but also because he inflicted on the world “three-note songs” that “tried the ears and patience of listeners”.

Under Gian Maria Vian, who took over as editor two years ago, the newspaper has shed its staid image and taken a more open and outward-looking approach.

It praised The Simpsons on the series’ 20th anniversary, saying Homer’s religious confusion and ignorance were a “mirror of the indifference and the need that modern man feels toward faith”.

Last summer, it praised the film version of J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for its depiction of “the eternal battle between good and evil” in the struggle between Harry and Lord Voldemort, despite having earlier criticised the Potter saga for promoting witchcraft.

But the newspaper criticised James Cameron’s 3D blockbuster Avatar as a “sentimental and facile, anti-imperialist and anti-militarist parable” that promoted  pantheism.

It also said the Twilight vampire series of books and films amounted to a “moral vacuum with a deviant message”.

THE TOP TEN
1. Revolver by The Beatles
2. If I Could Only Remember My Name by David Crosby
3. The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd
4. Rumours by Fleetwood Mac
5. The Nightfly by Donald Fagen
6. Thriller by Michael Jackson
7. Graceland by Paul Simon
8. Achtung Baby by U2
9. (What’s the story) Morning Glory? by Oasis
10. Supernatural by Carlos Santana

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check out “his” choices..and keep in mind he didnt choose them..thats just the PR campaign..so why have they chosen these groups and for what reasons?

dark side of the moon as the world moves through the triangle and becomes one as a white light out the other side..crosby the talentless hack with his eye dripping solar rays..revolver was a fully LSD influenced album by the beatles..santana was also a product of he mid 60s as with the mac and their self confessed white witch leading the vocals..we got jacko and the zombie album and of course bono must have made benedict feel all at home with achtung baby..and then oasis..singing about getting sex in the morning..maybe benedict wants to enjoy some the boys social drugs with them?

401

~ by seeker401 on February 21, 2010.