Pop-Music Magic!

[Lotus Poem]

I think that music is very powerful and there isn't anything fluffy, in my opinion, about using pop music in meditation, ritual, or magic. Nothing makes me feel quite as good as singing as loud and as long as possible.  

[Ainwyn]

Nuri

TheDisreputableDog

Oh give these clay feet wings to fly / To touch the face of the stars
A prayer I repeat often.

Same here. An inspiring song -- it's actually on a playlist I have for when I'm biking the local trail. It's just a great song to move body, mind and soul.

*points to signature* biggrin One of my favorite songs ever!

As for music I use it ritual and meditation, I've rarely use pop music. It's not necessarily because I don't listen to it (I do enjoy a lot of it, really!), but I generally can't listen to anything with English lyrics (or any lyrics that I've listened to enough to have them ingrained in my mind) because I'll start singing along with it, usually without knowing it.

Since I've learned about it in college, I always use minimalistic music while meditating (pretty much the precursor to techno). John Adams, Philip Glass and Steve Reich are the most famous for this. Sadly, the one I use most often doesn't have a decent video up on youtube. I had a group of friends at my old college who would regularly meditate to John Adams's "Shaker Loops". There's also a lot of Eastern European folk and Irish harp songs that have very repetitive qualities that work well.
Last year I had a discussion about using music during meditation with a Buddhist nun in Korea and she said that usually it's something she urges people to avoid but understood my need for it, and told me that as long as it didn't become the thing that I focused on, she couldn't see it being a bad thing. Pretty much anything that falls nicely to the back of my mind, taking all the other internal music with it, works really well for me.