**5. Conclusions**

In this piece I have suggested that even though Elvis fans are emotionally uplifted by his music and sometimes use religious language, they are not engaged in practices of sacralisation. I have argued that what religiosity scholars see as the expanded sacred is, in fact, a complex, multi-layered phenomenon. On one level, ideas of "idol worship" have been used to frame fandom as servile and misguided. Fans, music critics and detractors all use a religious vocabulary, but they use different registers within the same discourse to emphasize different experiences. At times this means that they talk past each other. Part of the reason for using religious language is that celebrity and music still enchant us in seemingly magical ways. Extracting one mechanism from Durkheim's work means we can recognize this "spiritual" phenomenon as something human: the result of an unequal exchange of attention. In a secular environment, vernacular music provides semiotic resources to express great intimacy and therefore makes commercial sense. When it appears in music themes and lyrics, the "sacred" (in its expanded sense) is therefore a *justification* for thrills generated by the totemic system. Attention to Elvis' sacred music—a field ignored by religiosity arguments—shows us how this happens. Gospel quartets drew no lines between the sacred and the secular. Elvis loved gospel and used it to enter the mainstream. Despite his own intentions, he did not, however, practice "worship" music. His fans respected his values but have not generally understood him as a conduit to God. Some have said that Elvis used his music as a God-given gift, in part because the reading aligns Elvis' values with his talents. He remains a centre of attention and is understood as a fascinating, socially-valued individual, but his fans do not position him as a deity or perfect being. An issue with neo-religiosity scholarship is that it rarely addresses counter-arguments or makes the fine distinctions necessary to fully understand the topic. Various ontological levels require untangling: the frameworks dominating public discussions about music fandom, how fans negotiate such frameworks, what actually generates listener emotions, why notions of the sacred appear in popular music, and, finally, how fans understand the faith of their heroes. When we start separating those out, we find that—despite superficial similarities—there is a marked difference between worshipping an idol and following a star.
