Danny ChaiWarning: These next two entries are going to be long. I doubt anyone gets through them.
Minho made a request that I blog about my top 10 Christian albums. I took this request really seriously, because I’m systematic and slightly neurotic, and definitive lists are not something I treat casually.
It’s always cooler to be obscure, and I was tempted to fill my list with albums by artists few people have ever heard of. Like Ji Lim, an obscure Korean (I think) Christian artist whose lone album I know of featured Bob Carlisle (Buttefly Kisses) and Scott Dente (of Out of the Grey). But in the end, obscure artists tend to stay obscure for a reason – they aren’t that great. So yeah, the albums in my favorites list tend to be a little more well known, and the “obscure” ones aren’t even that obscure.
Also, favorite music lists like these tend to not be super useful as recommendation engines just because tastes are so subjective and tied into all these other things, like nostalgia for a time. It hard to say that my favorite albums are the objective best musical albums ever made. Just that they impacted me in the time of my life that I heard them. That said, I do think they’re objectively the best Christian albums ever made, music-wise, and if you disagree, there’s something wrong with your taste. I am an arrogant Christian music snob-jerk.
I even had a hard time whittling my list down, so I’m starting with my runners-up. Sorry, I told you this would be long. These are in reverse chronological order.
Michael W. Smith – The Live Set (1987). The greatest Christian live album ever released. The energy on this album is incredible, in large part because they mix in crowd cheering during the songs, which is surprisingly effective. It also came out at the peak of his being spastic on stage era, and that spastic energy shines through. Anyway, the arrangements are very interesting – a lot of the music during that time was really sequenced synth driven, and seeing how they did the music live is interesting. And his solo version of Rocketown, just him on keyboard, is a tour de force. If you like late 80s pop (read: synthesizers), and I do, you’ll love this album. (Random trivia: MWS jammed with U2 during the recording sessions for How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb.)
Steven Curtis Chapman – Real Life Conversations (1988). People think I’m odd for this, but this is my favorite SCC album and the only one on my all-time favorites list. And I’m not sure I can explain why I like this album so much. A big part of it is that there’s a musical innocence to it. Starting with his later albums, he switched producers and his sound got more polished, more slick. They sound better, but this album is, to me, more fun, and, while rawer, I think the songs themselves are stronger. There’s not a single bad song (except for maybe Wait), and I can listen to it endlessly.
Amy Grant – Lead Me On (1988). My favorite Amy Grant album of all time; it was also among her least commercially successful. It’s musically grittier than her previous stuff, and that’s what I love about it – melancholy drips from the whole album. The lyrics are also kind of heartbreaking. Like she has one song, Faithless Heart, that’s basically about adultery, and it almost makes me cry every time I listen to it. It’s not the only one. Something about the songs on this album just penetrate. SN. You know how CDs used to (still do?) list whether the album was recorded/mastered digitally or analog. This is the first CD I recall being DDD. I don’t even know what that means, but I remember it being unusual; most albums were AAD or ADD. CCM magazine once named this the top album of all time, so there’s critical support around it, it just didn’t sell very well.
Charlie Peacock – The Secret of Time (1990). Charlie Peacock has a really odd singing voice, but once you get past that, he writes really thoughtful music. He started off kinda weirdo jazzy alternapop (Random trivia: American Idol judge Randy Jackson played on his self-titled album released by Island Records, U2’s imprint), then got a lot more poppy; this album came out right in the middle of that shift and is the perfect balance of accessible and edgy. Just a very strong album, way more ambitious and just plain better than anything else that was coming out of Christian music at the time.
The 77s – Sticks and Stones. It’s really hard to classify The 77s. They’ve done admirable covers of Led Zeppelin. Then they do most moody stuff, kind of Cure-like. In any case, they had a hard go, career-wise; they had a great album released by Island that kind of got overlooked because of U2’s (U2 is coming up a lot in this entry) concurrent success on the label. Anyway, The 77s are my favorite alternative Christian band; its lead (Mike Roe) is the second best guitarist in Christian music. This album is like a B-sides album. Ironically, it’s my favorite album they’re produced, and I consider it the best alternative Christian album of all time.
DC Talk – Free At Last (1992). If you’ve ever heard DC Talk’s first album, it’s horrible. But they steadily got better, and this album is the zenith of their rap phase. A fun, catchy, really musical album with no weaknesses aside form TobyMac’s vocals on The Hard Way. If like Young MC and Will Smith define fun rap, this is the best fun rap Christian album ever made.
The Lost Dogs – Little Red Riding Hood (1993). OK, so these guys are a little obscure, but they’re a Christian alternative music supergroup, composed of the leads from several bands (the 77s, The Choir, DA, and Adam Again). I don’t use “alternative” lightly, but these bands are truly alternative, meaning weird and, in large part, bad (well, at least DA and Adam Again). Strangely enough, this album itself isn’t alternative, it’s almost folk-acoustic, and it’s amazing. No production values to speak of, but it’s raw, real music with incredible lyrics. If you like slightly alternative acoustic stuff, it’s a great album.
Rachel Rachel – You Oughta Know (1993). Rachel Rachel was an all-female Christian rock band in the early 90s (kind of like a Christian Bangles with a little more edge). As far as I know, they produced only two albums, the first of which sucked apart from an interesting cover of Kansas’ Carry On My Wayward Son; this is their second. And it’s one of my favorite albums of all time; it just barely missed my top 10. While the group itself was kind of gimmicky, there’s nothing gimmicky about this album – just straightforward rock that’s surprisingly good. And all the songs are great except for one (“Only Heaven Knows”, which ironically got the most airplay on Christian radio, which has no taste). “You’ll Never Know” is one of my favorite songs of all time, a song I can listen to endlessly on repeat (and have). This album rocks, I always get into it, I love the female rock sound; I can’t talk enough about this album… and I don’t know a single person that owns it besides me. That’s always made me sad.
Dakoda Motor Co. – Into The Son (1993). The best Christian surfer-rock album ever made. The lead singer (who left the band after this debut album) had this captivating vibrato-free voice that kind of sounded like a brighter Natalie Merchant. It’s fun, sometimes rocking, sun-drenched music that’s a lot of fun.
Nouveaux – How I Feel (1996). This is kind of a weird album; I thought it was semi-obscure, then when I met Jieun I found out that she and all her friends had it. Anyway, this album is a symphony of sound, culminating in “If Only…”, which has some of the most beautiful vocals ever recorded in Christian music. The music is all good, but what pushes it to the top is the vocal production. It’s incredible. An album I love as a study of vocal harmony driven rock.
The O.C. Supertones – Supertones Strike Back (1997). The finest Christian ska album ever produced. Surprisingly, that means something. Remember that whole totally random ska craze of the late 90s? It spread to Christian music also. You’d be surprised at how many Christian ska bands there were. And they all had one thing in common: they sucked. To be frank, the O.C.S.’s albums before and after this one also sucked; the first one just wasn’t very musically good, and the latter came when ska was waning and it drifted too much. But somehow, they caught fire with this album. The band is super tight, the music rocks, just about every song is good; it’s a really fun album. Eddie and I listened to this one a lot the summer of 1997. Of course, we listened to a lot of Amish Paradise and MmmBop that summer also. But trust me, this album is great.
Michelle Tumes – Listen (1998). As you may or may not know, I was/am a huge Out of the Grey fan. I think Christine Dente has the best voice in Christian music, maybe in all music. And throughout the 90s, I kind of dreamed that she would come out with an Enya-like album, where they just used her voice in layer upon layer, a symphony of voice. I was both happy and sad when Michelle Tumes’ debut album came out; happy because it was exactly what I had in mind for Christine Dente, and the result was fantastic; sad because it wasn’t Christine Dente. In any case, this album is awesome – atmospheric music driven by layers of vocals. It’s beautiful. As it turns out, this album is kind of deceptive. After seeing her in concert and based on her subsequent albums, I think it reflects a masterpiece of Charlie Peacock’s production more than anything else. Live, her playing isn’t so even, her voice not so good. But this album – beautiful.
Various Artists – Streams (1999). The best Christian-compilation album ever released. It’s atmospheric and melancholy and drips with emotion through and through. It’s the type of music you want to listen to when you want to brood a bit, maybe journal, on a cold day while you’re sipping hot tea. I loved this album so much I bought multiple copies and offered it free to friends who promised to listen to it. The last 4 tracks are instrumentals recorded by the Irish Film Orchestra, and that kind of describes the mood of the entire album. I love melancholy, I love atmosphere, and I love this album.
No one is still awake, but my top 10 next entry.