Ben Rec­tor’s “The Joy of Mu­sic”

MISHAWAKA—Ben Rec­tor’s re­lease on March 11, “The Joy of Mu­sic,” is his sev­enth al­bum, not in­clud­ing his two live al­bums and his Christ­mas al­bum, which is at an EP length. This is the first al­bum to fea­ture artists other than him­self, in­clud­ing well-known rap­per Snoop Dogg and sax­o­phone leg­ends Dave Koz and Kenny G. He al­ways skirts on the edges of spir­i­tual con­tent in his songs and al­bums. In this al­bum, he does this in “Su­per­nat­ural” (feat. Dave Koz), and he forms a let­ter to some­one I in­ter­pret as God in “Thank You.” He is a good ex­am­ple of an artist who is Chris­t­ian, not a Chris­t­ian artist.

First, this al­bum has a theme be­sides spir­i­tu­al­ity and the su­per­nat­ural: find­ing joy in mu­sic again, hence the apt ti­tle of the al­bum. This find­ing joy is shown in the three-part mu­sic video he pro­duced for his first three sin­gles on this al­bum. The joy shifts fo­cus af­ter the first three songs to joy in other things in his life, like his daugh­ter in “Daugh­ter,” God in “Thank You,” Sun­days in “Sun­day” (feat. Snoop Dogg) and his life in gen­eral in “Joy.”

For my mu­sic speak, I am go­ing to shift to the lyrics again, but I will have a bit of gen­uine mu­sic speak here and there.

“Dream On”—This song starts soft and pen­sive in its or­ches­tra­tion with the pi­ano and the voice, but later the or­ches­tra adds tex­ture as he en­ters the cho­rus. A kid’s cho­rus comes in later as he sings, “dream on.” The song ends in a dif­fer­ent place than where it be­gan.

“Su­per­nat­ural” (feat. Dave Koz)—This song looks at a kind of faith that hap­pens when re­al­iz­ing the gen­eral rev­e­la­tion of God through the world and fo­cuses on a God who is alive.

“Liv­ing My Best Life”—It starts with a gospel choir and chords that feel res­olute. The lyrics talk about how the best life that he lives now is not what he ex­pected it to look like, but also how he is happy to live it.

“Steady Love”—I ap­pre­ci­ate the bridge part of this song, where he talks about steady love ver­sus wild and free love. Steady love will al­ways sup­port you, whereas wild and free love will not.

“He­roes”—This song is my per­sonal fa­vorite. It talks about miss­ing the peo­ple who you look up to and who taught you how to live. It made me miss my own per­sonal he­roes in my life.

“Sun­day” (feat. Snoop Dogg)—This was one of the most sur­pris­ing fea­tures on the al­bum, but I am happy it hap­pened. Snoop pro­vides a good fea­ture, and it is a fast-mov­ing song that feels like a Sun­day.

“Thank You”—I be­lieve and will con­tinue to be­lieve that this song is a let­ter to God, say­ing thank you for every­thing God has pro­vided for Rec­tor. Though he might not know what to say in prayer, he knows to say thank you.

“Daugh­ter”—This song fo­cuses on who he now pri­or­i­tizes. He used to pri­or­i­tize his ca­reer, but now he fo­cuses on his daugh­ter.

“Hang­ing Out” (Kenny G.)—This has an in­ter­est­ing mes­sage; it talks about liv­ing vic­ar­i­ously through sto­ries and songs you know and slow­ing down to just hang out and rest.

“We Will Never Be This Young Again”—This shows the di­chotomy be­tween two dreams Rec­tor had, one at 21 and one at 75. The mes­sage says to live the best you can now rather than wait­ing.

“It Would Be You”—This feels like a love song to his sig­nif­i­cant other, it has an 80s vibe to the in­stru­men­ta­tion.

“Cliches” (feat. Tay­lor Gold­smith)—This song ex­plores the cliches of the world and how to say them in a more au­then­tic way.

“Joy”—When you have joy in your life, you can say good­bye to strife. I feel like this song en­cap­su­lates the mes­sage of the whole al­bum.

Over­all, I ap­pre­ci­ated this al­bum. While I did not par­tic­u­larly like every song, there are a few songs I will con­tinue to play over the next few months like “He­roes,” “Joy,” and “Dream On.” Rec­tor con­tin­ues to pro­duce good and en­cour­ag­ing tunes to sing when one is feel­ing down. In a joy­ful mood, he thanks every­one who helped him make this al­bum and en­cour­ages those who have lis­tened to this al­bum to “be joy­ful.”