... is one more insipid worship song. (Rant warning!)
Every day when I'm on my way to pick up my daughter K from school, I turn on one of several "Family Friendly, Positive Message, Christian Hit Radio Stations." I hope against hope that they'll play something that's a good song in terms of music, content, and performance/production. The performances are generally good (Nashville studio cats usually) and the production--well you almost have to try to screw things up sonically these days with the plethora of virtual aids for the recording engineer/producer types. (I suspect that the next generation of Mac's Garage Band will be able to automatically generate songs in the same way that Jean-Luc Picard might simply request "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot." Imagine the possibilities: "Song, Lenny Kravitz, rocking, vaguely about Jesus." Oh, he's already done that?)
I was particularly annoyed by a song that rolled all my pet peeves up in one. It used a lot of churchy sounding words and phrases (which I'm way OK with using in congregational worship, BTW) like "manifest," "implore," and "adorn." Yet I found that there wasn't really a theme to the words. It's like the guy was brainstorming a bunch of standard (read "trite") worship phrases and stuck them together so they formed a rhyming pattern. The line that really honked me off was "Creator of all glorious things." Now, accuse me of being fussy about semantics (that accusation will surely stick), but shouldn't it probably be "Glorious Creator of all things"? You see the enormous difference, yes?
Besides that, it was full of "me" language. CHALLENGE TO ASPIRING WRITERS OF WORSHIP SONGS: try to use some "us" constructions. The church could maybe use that. Also, how about more songs about repentence and restoration? How about more songs with memorable and singable melodies? Consistent theology?
I could gripe for hours, but I need to go shoot some video on location.
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2 comments:
Ok... I know EXACTLY what song you are talking about. And a Labrador we both know introduced the song to the congregation about a month ago.
May I add to your critique? It is simply this: Buddy, if you are going to write a song, you might put the trouble of writing a second verse. We're already repeating the chorus a million and half times (can't we just sing a couple hallelujahs?) and it gets pretty boring (can we honestly say that without sounding irreverent? "It's Christian music, you can't critique it!") really quickly.
Theologically, I don't have as big of a problem with the "glorious things" line. After all, we have a tradition of "All things Bright and Beautiful" already in the books (although I would certainly agree that glorious Creator would be much preferred).
And yes, it is full of the "me" language that has saturated our "congregational" music (how ironic is that?). But so is a LOT of the Psalms that have been converted to music as well. But that is neither here nor there.
But it sure is peppy. And it certainly allows for a certain Labrador to give a big "Whooooo!" during it.
Please. Be a part of the composition revolution. Write lyrically beautiful, theologically coherent, 1st person plural, musically interesting worship music that doesn't rip off other songs.
I'm accepting the challenge - slowly but surely. I'm debuting a Psalm 139 influenced song this week. Still need to write the 2nd verse (touche'). One crazy thing I'm doing is passing out critique forms to a few people. Maybe more of us could try that...
I know what your saying about the Psalms, but there are many OT examples of 1st person plural songs of worship in the Pentateuch, Judges, Kings, Ezra/Nehemiah...
All I'm saying is maybe we get a better glimpse of the congregational practice in the narrative books as opposed to the Psalms, ya dig?
Ultimately, I don't know that "A Thousand Hallelujahs" is any worse than most of the other modern worship deluge. There are a few glimpses of hope. I've found a couple usable things on the "Glory Revealed" project - check out "By His Wounds." It's simple, catchy and true; good for communion - not to mention in 1st person plural.
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