I don’t blame you if you paid $400 for floor seats at the Elton John concert at BJCC last month.

Who, after all, doesn’t want to hear “Yellow Brick Road?”

Again.

Music needs its patriarchs. It needs its masters, its legends and saints. But it needs its prophets, too. And you know what they say about prophets. They are never recognized in their hometowns, in their own dive bars and music halls.

It’s like we don’t know what we have until it shows up — as it frequently does — on American Idol. We don’t hear the wonder of the music until our very ears are validated by some fat cat record producer in a long limousine.

“Hey, that’s good,” somebody from somewhere says. And suddenly Alabama believes.

But you can hear the song of our own prophets – in blues and jazz, rock, soul, rap and hip-hop and in songwriters with voices like angels – any night in Birmingham in places like Bottletree or Workplay, Iron City or a dozen more.

Can I get an “Amen?”

Because what’s going on in Birmingham these days is downright spiritual.

Lauren-Michael Sellers, whose unique voice lingers in my head like an apparition, releases an album this month with her band The Heavy Hearts. That album, “Keep Your Light On,” doesn’t need a stamp of approval from Hollywood or Nashville to make it good.

She is homegrown. That doesn’t mean it’s homemade.

Pinson boys John & Jacob are about to bust big on this world, like St. Paul and the Broken Bones are doing, edging that funky Alabama sound a tick forward from the soulful Alabama Shakes.

You can’t name them all in one place. Joel Madison Blount or Todd Simpson, K.L.U.B. Monsta or the incomparable Eric Essix. Just listen to India Ramey’s 2013 album “Blood Crescent Moon,” if you haven’t already. The song “Rusty City” sings to the soul of anyone with Birmingham ore in their veins.

From way up on the mountaintop I can see you, where the box cars and train tracks cut you half in two …

It’s not that these are good local acts. They are just good acts, period, as diverse and unique and innovative as you’ll find in any red-hot music town. It is hard to listen to them without pausing to wonder why they have yet to be validated by the world.

Or why — perhaps this is a better question — they don’t get the love they deserve at home.

So if you paid the price of a bottle of Dom Perignon to see Bruno Mars perform downtown, I hope it was great. The guy can really sing.

Next time, though, buy a local album, hear a local show. Hear the song of Birmingham’s prophets. And believe.

(You can see John Archibald’s Alabama Playlist on

, updated with the latest Birmingham and Alabama music).