"Changes" Lands on the Vatican's MySpace Playlist

When the streaming service MySpace Music launched on December 3, 2009, the Vatican also presented a list of twelve favorite tracks there. Included on it, between Mozart’s Don Giovanni, “Uprising” by Muse, and “After The Rain” by Shirley Bassey, was also Tupac’s “Changes”, released in 1998 on his Greatest Hits album.

Selected by a Publishing Director

The list was compiled not by the Pope, but by Giulio Neroni, artistic director of the publisher St. Paul’s Multimedia. The selection was justified on the grounds that all artists shared the goal of reaching the hearts of well-meaning people. According to ABC News, “Changes” was played more than 4.6 million times in the first two days, even though the song was marked as “explicit.”

Online, the selection sparked discussion. An ABC News commentator called it the best publicity the Vatican had received in years. More about the two honors that Tupac received from unexpected quarters in 2009 and 2010 can be found under Library of Congress and Vatican. The second of these was the induction of “Dear Mama” into the US national sound archive.