31 March 2013

Music Day (Part Two)

This past Tuesday, my friend from dance team texted me and asked if I would be willing to be a co-choreograph/perform a trio to this song.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything earth-shattering. The friend who texted me has a music collection so diverse and eclectic I've given up trying to define it, but the other person in the trio seems to be very much into the current-CCM... stuff. I can't really blame her -- after all, that's all there is unless you're willing to invest some serious time into tracking down some of the older Christian stuff, and before that you have to know it even exists... somewhere.

So I looked the song up on YouTube, bracing myself for a CCM-radio-friendly, mushy-gushy, sappy thing laden with Christian-bookstore clichés. (Seriously, with a title like Arise My Love, what else could it possibly be except a bland song of plastic-happy fake 'encouragement' to all the depressed/suicidal teenage girls out there?)

I did not get a mushy-gushy, sappy thing laden with Christian bookstore clichés.

What I got was this:
Title: Arise My Love
Artist: Newsong
Album: Say Yes
Year: 1987
Label: Word Records
iTunes here; YouTube here (apologies for the crappy sound quality... it sounds way better from iTunes, but you'll get the general idea).

What really sold me on this song was the fact that it includes actual theological concepts. Nothing heavy, mind you, but enough to prove that these guys know what they're talking about -- they're not just cashing in on the 'clean music' cow. They know what actually happened on that cross. They don't take you through it step-by-step in the song (for that, look up Lecrae's fantastic song Truth), but they probably could explain it if you asked them.

It's still not completely earth-shattering -- it's definitely radio-friendly, meaning it's not real musically creative -- but it's pretty, with a nice musical progression, and the sheer passion in the vocal makes up for the potential blandness of the soundtrack. Timeless? Not likely. But a great soundtrack for Easter weekend.

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