Worship Album Trend

Random data point. I can’t remember where I read this, it was like a year and a half ago, but there was some interview with Jars of Clay that was really interesting. Part of it dealt with how their record label was pressuring them somewhat to release a worship album, a trendy thing to do. And they were against it. I’m not sure I completely buy their reasons for not doing it, it was something like, if we release a worship record, what does that make the rest of our albums? They’re all intended to be God glorifying, so to make a explicit worship album implies the others weren’t, something like that. Whatever.

But the point is, there was some pressure from the record label to make a “worship” album. I don’t know if I doubt the motives of the artists but I do doubt the motives of the labels and the industry. They see worship as being profitable. Even the press releases for the MWS/3rd Day tour do this. Talk about how many copies MWS’ worship album sold. I dunno, worship is a business. And that’s kind of sad to me. And like all Christian enterprises, they’re going to run this into the ground (if they haven’t already). You know, with like Shout To The Lord Kids, Praise Exercise, etc. Just wait for MWS’ Pilates Worship. Or City On A Hill’s Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus Worship.

Ack, just did some searching and you know what, it’s already way overdone. They’re cross pollinating with other overdone themes. Behold: Left Behind Worship, The Prayer Of Jabez Worship. Left Behind Worship??? Wouldn’t that be the most depressing worship album ever? And isn’t the name kind of ridiculous? Come on, Christians. This isn’t Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Let’s show a little restraint. I dunno, if I ever record a worship CD I’m using only Gregorian chants or stuff like that. Keeping it real.

SN. Have you ever been to a Catholic mass? You have to check out their hymnals or songbooks or whatever they use. I dunno, their songs are just weird musically, I think. The weird thing is that like, they’ll have songs that are straight from the Bible and the melodies are like literally a single note so the music is just a series of Gs on a staff. So the people sing like “Blessed be the Lord from this time forth and forevermore”, every syllable a G. The ridiculous thing is, the music will list copyright info, like “Words and music copyright 1974 John Doe”. Is that really necessary? Absurd.