The Sad State of Christian Music

This is going to be the most controversial post you read this week.

I’m going to speak in sweeping generalities, with a very limited data set to support my conclusions. And I readily confess that the following is strictly subjective opinion, so by all means, feel free to disagree.

I have somewhere north of 7,000 songs on my iTunes. They cover a very broad spectrum of musical styles: rock, country, pop, jazz, R&B, classical, orchestral, new age, folk, celtic, broadway, gospel — heck, I even have a couple of bluegrass albums on there. Here’s what I don’t have:

1. Rap. After much study and consideration, I have come to the conclusion that rap is not music — it is freeform poetry (most of it not very good, but some of it, like Hamilton, quite excellent). Want proof? Try “performing” any average rap without any background music, and without singing a note. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

. . .

Done? No problem, right? Most raps don’t require music, and in fact for most of them the “music” is just background noise — sometimes just rhythmic noise — meant to keep the beat. But the music is not necessary, and just adds flavor. Just because there’s that haunting bass line in the movie Jaws doesn’t mean the naked lady’s screams are music.

Now, try performing Disney’s “Let It Go” without any instrumental music, and without singing a note. Ready, go!

. . .

Didn’t work out so well, did it? That’s because, regardless of what you think of the song itself, “Let It Go” is actually music — if you take away the notes, the whole thing falls apart. So, rap is poetry. Moving on.

2. Contemporary Christian Music. Now, by this I don’t mean any Christian music, i.e. Christian rock or Christian pop. I have lots of that stuff — from circa 1970 to 2000. What I mean is truly contemporary Christian music — stuff that’s been playing on Christian radio in the last 20 years or so. I don’t have that on my playlists. Why? Because it’s booooriiiing.

First off, it’s musically boring. As an experiment I listened to our local Christian music radio station for over an hour (painful), and listed the tempos of 10 consecutive songs. In that data set, the median tempo was about 81 bpm (beats per minute), and the average tempo was about 87 bpm. There was one outlier in that data set that skewed the numbers; one song had a tempo of 150 bpm. If I discard that one, the next higher tempo was 100 bpm, the average tempo would have been less than 80 bpm, and the median would have been 73 bpm. For you non-musical folks out there, the upshot is that most of the stuff out there is so slow as to be positively funereal. The chord progressions are usually pretty basic (I, IV, V or, if you’re lucky, I, II, V). Most of the instrumentation is fairly uniform — lots of acoustic guitar and piano, synth pads, etc. I didn’t hear a single power guitar or fun stuff (i.e. brass, fiddle, hammered dulcimer) in any of the songs. In short, the stuff currently out on Christian radio is uniformly cream of wheat — it all tastes the same: bland.

It’s also lyrically boring, ambiguous and doctrinally vacuous. Look, I like the song “How He Loves” as much as the next person, but . . . Well, I suppose that’s not true. Obviously a ton of people love that song, and I just don’t get it. I’ve sung it dozens of times, and each time I try my hardest to make sense of some of the lyrics, but just can’t. Seriously: “If His grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking”? What does that mean? Not everyone is in the ocean of God’s grace. Some are lost! And why are we sinking? Shouldn’t His grace be lifting us up? And if we’re trees, why are we bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy? What does that mean? Is the “wind” His Spirit, or something else? I’m only asking.

I’m not trying to pick on David Crowder. There are dozens of songs out there that give me the same type of frustrations. Most of what I hear is either lyrically simplistic (i.e. “God is good.” True, but hardly Amazing Grace, and could be sung by any good Muslim.), or vaguely mushy (“Your raindrops of light penetrate the desert of my darkness and fill my nights with day.” I just made that up. Don’t build a doctrine on it.)

This video pretty much sums up the way I think most current Christian music is made.

Now I will admit, there is some good stuff out there. Some. It’s just hard to find. At least for me.

Compare today’s Christian music with what was on the radio, say, in the ’90s. Truth, Rich Mullins, Michael. W. Smith, D.C. Talk (oops — sorry. Rap.), Sandi Patti, Wayne Watson, 4 Him, Petra, Amy Grant, Carman, DeGarmo & Key, Randy Stonehill, Kim Hill, Michael Card, Leslie Phillips, Newsboys (yes, even before they were in every Christian movie ever), Point of Grace, White Heart, Steven Curtis Chapman, Susan Ashton, and so much more! I’m not saying you would or should enjoy listening to all of these artists as I do. (You should, but I’m not saying that.) I’m saying that they are all very, very different from each other. There’s no mistaking Petra for Newsboys, or Kim Hill for Sandi Patti. A huge variety of styles (rock, pop, country, folk, alternative, jazz, even a bit of “classical” and bluegrass influence).

Now some of the “old” stuff was just as lyrically simplistic as today’s stuff (“He’s the rock that doesn’t roll.” Really, Larry Norman?). But some of it was really creative, theologically deep, and grappled with hard issues (i.e. just about everything else by Larry Norman).

I’ll wrap up by pointing out that I’m talking about the music that’s getting airplay on Christian radio, at least where I live. I have no doubt there are musically creative artists out there writing and recording theologically sound and practically meaningful Christian music. But they are in the shadows, not on the radio, and not in our worship sets at church (generally).

Your mileage may vary.