Ten years ago when I first started listening to Christian music I was appalled at the standard of most everything I heard. But as most of the music I was listening to on the secular side was sexual and/or drug induced I stopped listening to it and made due with whatever Christian music I could find. Over time I found a few places that were making decent music – Morningstar and IHOP-KC. IHOP-KC, in particular, improved over the years to the point where now some of their stuff is quite good. I was almost to the point where I was willing to say that Christian music had gotten as good as secular music.

That is until today. Now I realize that I had simply lowered my standard. Over the last few years I have slowly started to listen to some of the stuff I used to listen to provided that the lyrics aren’t an issue. Until now I could make allowances saying that the secular musician was either a rare genius (Bjork, Thom Yorke, DJ Shadow) or a genius on drugs (Tricky, Kevin Shields, Miles Davis). Tonight my wife asked me the name of a particular Fiona Apple song. I used to be a big Fiona Apple fan so I went to YouTube and started listening to some of the songs off her first album that I used to love. I was totally blown away. Go to YouTube and listen to her “Sullen Girl.” Keep in mind that she was 18 when this came out. I had forgotten how good she was. Whether or not the style is to your taste, the depth of her lyrics, how her voice conveys the emotion of the lyrics like she feels the lyrics instead of performing a singing exercise, and the beautiful background music are very powerful. Part of the reason this affected me is I don’t believe she is a genius, her subsequent stuff hasn’t been as good, and I don’t believe she was doing drugs. She just wrote powerful lyrics and sang them like they should be sung.

One of the issues I have with Christian music is that Christian musicians have the Holy Spirit in them and so should be way more creative and excellent than musicians who are just making music because they love music or because they want to be rich and famous. One theory I have is that it is the Christian music industry itself. The audience is smaller than the secular audience and so artists can’t afford to make too strong of a statement for fear of alienating fans. I once knew a Christian musician who has since made it in the music industry. At the time I knew him he was listening to the same stuff as me, DJ Shadow and Radiohead. But he wrote poppy worship music. Music I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have listened to if he had a choice. Why is that? I can’t say what his heart was, but I would guess it was because he wanted to get signed (which he did). There is nothing really wrong with that, but it does lower the standard. If people are making music they think will sell instead of music they love the quality will always be less.

We need Christian artists who will make honest music. Who will write lyrics that they mean. And will not limit their music to what is accepted by the Christian mainstream, but will write music that is beautiful and moving. We need Christian musicians to stop pumping out so much music. Yes, there is something about getting your message out, but if nobody listens to cd more than 3 or 4 times is anything being accomplished? Wouldn’t it be better to write music compelling enough it would bear listening to over and over. The great musicians only make an album every 3 or 4 years. That means they are working on perfecting 10 songs for years. That is why the songs can be so good. They’ve put more time into them.