Bottum's claim, at the end of his article, that he loves music, came as a
surprise to me, because I am inclined to say that he despises music.  This
is just not because he hears too much of it on elevators.  It is not even
that popular song lyrics don't always make much sense, although that is a
strong clue to his thinking.  With Plato, he doesn't trust the emotional
or sensuous force of music.  Most of all, Bottum finds music, even that
preferred by those he calls classical snobs, a second rank art form because
it doesn't have intellectual content.  And to the extent that the lyrics,
of the vocal music we can't avoid, do have some intellectual content and
reflect our society, Bottum doesn't like what that says about us as a
society.  In another age, someone like Bottum might safely have taken
refuge in a monastery, where the music and accompanying words might better
have reflected his view of the world, and I suppose this still might be an
option for him, but he prefers to deliver a jeremiad.

Jim Tobin