Evangelicals Now
<< October 2005 >>

The Music Exchange

Improvement, but slowly

I’ve just been on my song-shopping spree, and have come back with a couple of new books which have some singable songs in.

The Source 3 (published by Kevin Mayhew) has most of the latest, and Worship Experience New Songs 2005-06 (published by Kingsway) has the new Getty/Townend, ‘Oh, to see the dawn’, which I think is worth the price of the book in itself.

I’m in the middle of wading through every song at the moment at the piano, and I’ve noticed a few general themes which keep on cropping up.

Theological care

First, there is more care taken over the theology in the songs than there was in the 90s. There are clear attempts to be more faithful to Scripture, and there is an effort from some writers to be more profound in the expression of biblical truth. Having said that, the majority of songs are still only just deep enough to drown an ant wearing a snorkel. The trouble is that many start promisingly, and then they stick in an ‘Oh yeah’ or an ‘I just really wanna’. As soon as I see one of those, I flick straight over to the next song. Doesn’t the line ‘Because of you, I can be me’ make your toes do arpeggios in your shoes? Mine are playing a Chopin ƒtude.

There are some songs which have the appearance of being biblical, because they take an Old Testament character or imagery. The trouble is that instead of taking the characters or images to be the shadows of the greater realities that are found in Christ, we are invited to ‘become David or Joshua’, or to ‘experience’ the shadow. Hence, some songs use temple imagery to invite us to ‘enter the holy place’ while we’re singing, rather than giving thanks that we are already seated in the heavenly realms in Christ. This is a symptom of the fact that our songs are written by musicians rather than theologians, something that must be addressed if our songs are going to get any better.

Guitar tunes

Second, the tunes. Celtic still seems to be winning the day (not the football team — they’re not winning anything at the moment). A simple melody with slight variations in the harmony for colour — that’s all a tune needs. Again, the majority of songwriters are missing this trick. The tunes are mostly written by guitarists who get a good rhythm together, and then stick a ballad-like tune on the top. They’re hard to pick up at the best of times, without all the cross-rhythms that require a music degree to decipher from the sheet music. Also, if it’s tricky getting a grip on the tunes for the verses and choruses, there’s now a trend of putting in various links and bridges which have yet more different tunes. The upshot of this is that many new songs take up four or five pages in modern books. It’s one of the consequences of trying to follow the pop song format. However, these songs have got such a short shelf-life these days that, by the time the congregation have struggled to learn one, it’s passŽ, and, anyway, by then the song companies are trying to market the latest ‘hit’. This may sound cynical, but they’ve got to make money, so there’s got to be a fast through-put of songs to keep the wheels turning.

So, my analysis is that things are getting better slowly, but there’s much more to do to convince our songwriters and marketers that we don’t need quick-sellers, we need best-sellers that will go on feeding us for generations to come.

Richard Simpkin