Salt or sugar?

As contemporary Christian music enjoys enormous success in the US, some Christian artists believe the genre depends too much on marketing tests and pop formulas and not enough on a biblical worldview.

Tagged with multi-coloured name badges, contemporary Christian music (CCM) heavyweights descended on downtown Nashville this Spring for the Gospel Music Association's annual Dove Awards, CCM's version of the Grammys.

It was a sweet night for the $500 million genre that bases its entire marketing strategy on an adjective - Christian - instead of a distinctive sound or style like jazz or country. 'We are here to honour some of the men and women who have made gospel and contemporary Christian music relevant today,' announced host Kathie Lee Gifford. 'They are speaking the language of this generation.'

But what is this language? Some leading CCM artists are concerned that a decaying base lies beneath the glittering pedestal CCM has built. 'CCM has made itself irrelevant in many ways because of its lack of a foundation', said singer-songwriter Wes King, who took the stage later this evening with Michael W. Smith to accept the song-of-the-year award for 'This is your time' (co-written by both in honour of Columbine victim Cassie Bernall).

If such a comment seems odd coming from a CCM artist, consider Mr King's disturbing induction into the CCM's big leagues after garnering five Dove nominations for his album, The Robe. 'When I got nominated and sold a fair amount of records, everybody started going, 'OK, let's groom this guy'. I found myself going to this lesbian atheist who was going to tell me how to talk in interviews.' Mr King ditched CCM's finishing school after his coach instructed him to use terms like 'my faith' instead of 'Jesus' and 'dysfunction' instead of 'sin'. 'They wanted to extract anything about my faith that was offensive,' said Mr King, who has since ditched his record label.

Mr King isn't alone. In interviews with WORLD, more than a dozen CCM artists openly worried that the CCM culture forces musicians into a bland, one-dimensional niche. Songs about dealing with sin, or real-life hardships, its seems, don't pass popularity tests.

Take 'The Edge', a song Michael Card wrote about the suicidal tendencies he struggled with as a college student. 'It took me four or five years of processing to finally write a song about it,' Mr Card explained. But marketing executives were terrified the song would destroy his Bible-scholar image. Mr Card's latest project is an album based on the book of Hebrews. 'One of the marketing people said: 'Is there any way we can do this so people don't know it's about Hebrews?',' he recalled. 'That's the kind of thing I have battled for the last 20 years.'

The bottom line

But the record companies say that they have to sell records to make money, and the problem is that songs about the challenging parts of Scripture or the challenges of life, aren't always good business. So, instead, CCM leaders are striving to make 'Christian' synonymous with positive. Indeed 'positive' is the latest mantra sung by some CCM retailers seeking a definable marketing niche in mainstream society.

Secular companies that own CCM record labels are only too happy to reinforce this. 'Just look at the mainstream companies,' said Hugh Robertson, formerly in charge of mainstream marketing for the Sparrow label. 'You've got some of the most negative things that anybody has ever created, art or pop-wise. Maybe on some level they like to balance it with something positive.'

The conundrum

Wearing spiffy black-frame, shaded glasses and a check shirt, Mr Robertson made clear that the bottom line figures into the common CCM reluctance to take up some difficult things. 'Look, you've got a record company here whose job it is to sell records,' he said. 'This isn't like a judgment call or a values call. If a song about suicide is unpopular, that's not the record company's fault.'

Welcome to the Christian music conundrum - the continuing saga of an industry trapped between its desire to infiltrate the mainstream culture and its need to protect a marketing niche. Songs must be distinctively Christian enough to be within the niche, but not so focused on the hard truths of Scripture that they alienate mainstream listeners. Those who want clarity are pulling this genre in opposite directions.

Candi Cushman

This article is edited from WORLD magazine, May 15 and is used with permission.

© Evangelicals Now - July 2000
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