So I'm here today (wow this is pretty much a speech not a blog :-) to talk about the State of Christian music. I don't even know why I'm doing this since you (my fam) are the only ones to read this and I've already pretty much told you what I think about it. So I guess this is mostly addressed to Jesse and Doug (and any stranger to accidentally finds their way here.)
Imagine this hypothetical situation. You're listening to Generic Secular Hits Station and the pretty boy-sounding DJ comes on w/ the announcement "Hey what's up your boy (name) here, good news, Simple Plan's new single has been released worldwide, so here we go, for the first time, Simple Plan!" and the music comes on..........and it's Move Along (a no. 1 hit by All-American Rejects, a pop-punk band just like Simple Plan, that was popular like 6 months ago.)
Or, you're listening to Country Music Station, and the annoying, overdone country accent comes on "Howdy, laydeez AND gentlement, it's Scooter hur weeth THE latest from the le-gen-DARY Garth Brooks, back from REtiremint, with his lates' song." You get excited, lean forward...and "Live Like You Were Dyin'" comes on.
Neither of these situations would ever happen, in any genre of music. T.I. isn't going to be doing "This is Why I'm Hot" anytime soon. Norah Jones probably isn't gonna cover "Waitin' on the World to Change", I don't think Hinder is going to do "Photograph" and I'm not expecting to hear Papa Roach's version of "From Yesterday" anytime soon. So why does this happen ALL THE TIME in portions of the Christian music industry?
As far as a I know, it doesn't happen in the trendy Christian-themed-but-not-quoting-Scripture genre (Relient K, Switchfoot, 12 Stones, Hawk Nelson) or in the Christian Rock genre (Kutless, Plumb.) But it seems like everyday when listening to basic Christian pop I hear another popular artists "stealing" a popular song from a different band or artists. Selah pretty much does it whenever they want (You Raise Me Up "Josh Groban" Bless the Broken Road "Rascal Flatts) Geoff Moore took "When I Get Where I'm Goin'" when it's still a top 20 hit on country music...you see the theme?
Now to be clear, I'm not talking about covering songs that are old. A lot of artists/bands do that, or take a chorus from an old song and write different verses, or whatever. That can show a degree of creativity, or, at the least, it's a song to fill a CD that a lot of people like. That's different then taking a song that is popular now, and doing it yourself. Not only is this a cop-out (Selah didn't change any melody or chords to Bless the Broken Road, and they even had a similar piano line in all the musical interludes) but ANYONE CAN DO IT. Me, Joey, Nathan, Stephan and James Henry could get together, memorize how Brad Paisley's band did When I get Where I'm goin', change it up a little bit, and then get anyone with a decent voice (Tobin, Kyle whoever we wanted) to sing it. And in our case we could even give James Henry a sweet guitar solo and we'd have done it better then Geoff Moore. But does this mean that bands who are supposed to be good (at least good enough to get a record) should do it? Isn't the reason you're a band b/c you're willing to put in the time and effort needed to tour, and b/c either you're creative and musically gifted enough to write songs, or you know songwriters who are? Why do you have to steal it from someone else? Is there really not enough good Christian songwriters out there to the point where bands/artists have to steal from one another (or even secular groups like Rascal Flatts?)
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4 comments:
The answer is simple, in my opinion. The hesitancy is to write a song that "says the same thing as all the other songs." So instead of writing a new one, they just take the same one that was a hit and do it themselves because it has already proven to work. For secular music, they can say whatever they want whenever they want however they want. But for the Christian musicians, most themes are off limits, and therefore they may be stifled creativity wise.
I don't believe that this has to be true. In fact, I think Christian music should be THE most creative, because what we sing about is the MOST important thing to EVER sing about. We should never run out of ways to glorify the Gospel.
There is a mindset in Christian music that worship songs are supposed to be done by all sorts of different people. When I write a worship song, I want lots of people to be able to do it.
I think this mindset you noticed has crept in when people see how successful guys like Michael W. Smith could be by converting from mere performers to putting out worship albums with nothing but other people's songs.
So what we are seeing here is really the result of this worship-artist, worship-concert mindset taking over broadly.
The distinctions between contemporary Christian artists like Chapman, and worship leaders like Redman are becoming more and more blurred. There is such a demand for 'worshipful' music and new hit worship songs that every body has put out a worship album. Pretty soon every Christian artist is going to be, to some degree, a worship-artist-leader.
So, the borrowing of songs is a byproduct of the worship artist mentality. If all Christian songs are worship songs, they are meant to be done by various people.
If you were rushed in your first post I...um...am interested in the length of your comments when you are NOT rushed.
Of course, I love listening to or reading or hearing ANY comments my kids make, especially when they're long.
Even if it reminds me of how old I am because I can hardly follow what's being said. :-)
i don't have much to say to this...i think jesse is on to the main reason that doing the same songs is more common in christian music and that being that is more acceptable when the music is worshipful. you say several times that it's "stealing", but it's actually not stealing because the original artist or writer gets paid for this. also, unlike secular music, when a song that is worhipful gets redone, you're not really taking someone else's life experience or inspiration (that has nothing to do w/ you) and then representing it as if it were yours.
i say you put this band together that you mention and then make a cover album of all your favorite contemporary christian music. call it jake's fakes!
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