First-Person Faith

Originally written September 18, 2022, 6:51pm. 

 

Something I've noticed about Christian music that you don't really see in any other genre is second-person songwriting. The big late-'80s arena rock bands were especially bad for this (Petra, Stryper, and DeGarmo & Key all loved this approach).

Don't get me wrong, I love Petra. But this approach to songwriting creates the tiniest 'holier-than-thou' feeling. It's always 'you feel lost and confused, your life feels empty, oh look, here's Someone who can take all your pain away.' (This also feeds into the insidious prosperity gospel that is the foundation for modern Evangelicalism, but that's another blog post.) This is why we look back now and feel a slight cheesiness in the music of Petra and Stryper, while bands like Prodigal and Daniel Amos (you knew I was going to bring them into this) still sound lyrically fresh some forty years later.

Why?

DA and Prodigal wrote in first person. Prodigal was especially good at this; it was even noted as one of their strengths by critics of the time. Pick literally any Prodigal song and you have a masterclass in first-person characterization. Their cheesiest song happens to be one of only two songs that they wrote in second person (Emerald City). (The second song was Bobby, which was written with such immersive detail that it feels like you are living that life, in first-person.)

But look at a song like Masks or Answering Machine or I Don't Know Who You Are or The Big Sleep -- all of those are emotional heavy hitters, and every one of them is in first-person. Daniel Amos has songs like Here I Am; Big Time/Big Deal; Dig Here Said The Angel; Props; Half Light, Epoch, And Phase; and perhaps the most devastatingly tender song ever written, The Twist.

 

Where Petra and every late-'80s-solo-male-CCM-radio-vocalist-ever wrote songs that kept the listener at arms' length until they repented, DA and Prodigal were taking their listeners by the hand and whispering I know. I understand. I'm here.

 

And isn't that really what Christianity is based on? Jesus, Emmanuel, God-With-Us, coming into our lives and taking our hands and saying I know. I understand. I'm here? 

 

Being held at arms' length makes you a project. Being sat with while you cry makes you loved. And if God is love and we are supposed to be reflect Him, why are we holding people at arms' length? That's not at all what He did. My theory is this is why a lot of the late-'80s-solo-male-CCM-radio-vocalist songs feel cheesy or hollow today... they feel so far away, so distant, so not how the God they preach really is.

Music Day - Kyrie

 How have I not featured this one yet?

Yeah, okay, it's more well-known than 99% of stuff I post on this blog, but that's for good reason. This song -- as the kids say -- slaps. This is the song that inspired my best novel. This is one of the most soaring songs from an entire decade defined by music that soared. How in the world have I not featured this?

If you, like me, were sheltered as a child, you may not know of this song, and that's okay. In fact, that's great, because now you're old enough to remember your first time hearing it instead of just always sort of being aware of it, and that's honestly a really special thing. Get comfortable. Relax. Take a couple deep breaths. Prepare to be enchanted.

The song starts out with Richard Page calling out the title exactly as the original Greek intended -- as a plaintive cry of the heart, soft and distant across the desert of life. God have mercy.

We get a percussive synth buildup, a guitar hit, and glorious big drums. The verse is great. Page has the perfect smooth-but-passionate voice for a harder pop song like this, especially one with more introspective lyrics. But the real magic happens once you hit the chorus.

It's big. It's bombastic. It's shimmering. It's looking up at a thousand stars at night and pondering the galaxies beyond -- an exercise that might inspire one to echo Page's heart-cry. God have mercy.

God have mercy down the road that I must travel

God have mercy through the darkness of the night

God have mercy -- where I'm going, will You follow?

God have mercy on a highway in the light...

This is not a party-pop song. This is a song written by a pensive person reflecting on their life -- both what has come and gone as well as what lies dimly ahead. The chorus is literally a prayer -- a rather upbeat and danceable one, but a prayer nonetheless. The fact that they took a lyric like this and made it into one of the biggest pop-rock anthems of the decade (as track 7 on a vinyl album to boot) is a testament to the band's skill. (It was not a fluke either -- see also Broken Wings.)

And just when you think that spine-chilling chorus literally cannot get any better, all the instruments drop out except those phenomenal drums and those soaring band harmonies, crying for mercy like the monks in the choirs who first put those Greek words to music, but even earlier than that, like the tax collector named Zacchaeus who not only repaid what he stole, but quadrupled the return payment, like the woman clothed in little more than jewellery and makeup as she dumped perfume on Jesus' feet, like the ragged scrap of skin writhing on the cross next to Jesus as he asked to taste a small morsel of the Kingdom.

It was a well-crafted pop hit, to be sure. But it came from a place of honesty that leveled it up above anything that today's carefully-curated pop songwriting teams could ever hope to attain. Skill and experience certainly helped this song -- there's no question that Page and co. have copious amounts of both -- but those alone can seem sterile when not taken into the stratosphere with a gut-level lyric like this.

Listen and be amazed, whether for the first time or the thousandth time.

Title: Kyrie

Artist: Mr. Mister

Album: Welcome To The Real World

Year: 1985

iTunes here; YouTube here.

When I was young I thought of growing old

Of what my life would mean to me

Would I have followed down my chosen road

Or only wished what I could be...?

Music Day - Only Time

I am reinstating Music Day just so I can fangirl over this song. That is how good this song is. You know when you watch a sunset and everything seems so 'right'? That's what this song is like.

See, I bought a bunch of Crumbächer tapes the other day (full saga forthcoming). Stephen Crumbacher was already one of my favourite lyricists, just behind the likes of Terry Scott Taylor, Loyd Boldman, and the duo of David Meece and Dwight Liles. Identical Twins alone is a testament to just how much mastery Stephen Crumbacher has over the written word. Even in today's song -- notice how clearly you can picture each description of the sky. Now realise that he is painting this entire mental picture with three lines of text (each) and a bit of keyboard. He takes you almost literally across the galaxy, across time and space -- in essentially twelve lines of poetry.

I grew up in the Alberta countryside. Our yard faced west and every single night, from the comfort of our living room, we could watch God paint the western sky. I have seen many, many brilliant sunsets over the years, and that's one of the biggest things I miss now, living on a south-facing yard. But to this day sunsets capture me. All feels right in the world if I can watch a sunset for a while. In this song Crumbächer follows the changing, timeless skies with a wonder and peace that is rarely, rarely seen in the arts -- ever.

In the later Crumbächer albums, Stephen really began to show off the depth and emotional range of his piano/keyboard skills (though keyboards had always been a core part of the band's sound), and they are on full display here (the interlude, people!). Maybe Thunder Beach didn't have the harmonic virtuosity (vocals-wise) that Escape and Incandescent had, but the piano skills -- even just on this song -- make up for it.

Also, the space in the drum track opens this thing right up into something big and glorious and sweeping (again... that interlude!). Dawn's vocals are a really lovely touch. All in all, this is probably one of the loveliest songs I have ever heard -- and this is coming from a person who owns almost everything Terry Scott Taylor has ever written.

Title: Only Time
Artist: Crumbächer
Album: Thunder Beach
Year: 1987
Label: Frontline Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

Midnight - the stars are shining
Frequencies that tease the ear
Parade across the atmosphere...

Music Day - Beautiful Mystery

Here's a song I can almost guarantee you've never heard before. You hipster types, remember you heard it here first. You're welcome.

This man is one of the greatest songwriters (if not the greatest songwriter) ever to walk the face of the earth. He has forty-one years of professional experience -- this includes writing, playing, singing, touring, producing... the whole gamut. This is a guy who's been around the block a few times and lets his experience inform and deepen his songwriting. And we, the listeners, are richer for it.

Title: Beautiful Mystery
Artist: Terry Scott Taylor
Album: Bedroom Demos #3
Year: 2017
Label: Independently published on Patreon.
Only available on his Patreon page here.
If you like what you hear, please consider supporting his endeavours to make more music like this, right on his Patreon page. As a supporter myself, I can tell you that every penny you put to this is worth it.

Unfortunately, due to the rampant ageism (and the need to be 'safe and fun for the whole family' -- that is, 'no sarcasm or deep thought allowed') in the Christian music industry, Mr. Taylor and his work have been largely ignored. This is, at best, a crime against humanity. His observations and acknowledgement of the tension between art and society, faith and reason, the now and the not-yet are some of the most acute I have ever seen (and given my upbringing, church background, and post-secondary education, I've been exposed to more than your average number of theological tomes).

In this song, he explores this tension directly (cf. also his album (with his band Daniel Amos) Darn Floor - Big Bite). More specifically, he observes how people tend to try to fit Jesus into their own image of what they think He should be, how we tend to put God in a box far too small, how we try to tame the almighty God, the lion like Aslan.

When we could not grasp love this profound
We subdued it with a thorny crown
Whipped it into shape and nailed it down
Sealed the exit from the burial ground...

One last note: this song is actually a demo, recorded in his bedroom with nothing but an acoustic guitar, a MacBook, and a microphone. Yet it's deeper and more powerful than any of the tripe they're playing on hipster Spotify playlists. Its very simplicity allows the lyric to penetrate deeper.

Go take a listen. You might just enjoy it.

Snapshot of the Last Rays of Hope

26 October 2016, 1.52am.

The other day I was flipping through my notes from Songwriting class. I took this class in the final semester of my AA degree, as a modular (week-long intensive) course. This was, of course, the semester when my entire life went to h-e-double-hockey-sticks.

There were a lot of journaling exercises in that class, and it was strange reading some of what I had written in those exercises. At that point in the semester, Brittney had been dead for less than a month. Our family friend was in the final stages of an extremely aggressive cancer and would in fact die less than two weeks later. The two divorces that jaded my entire concept of familial love and care had already burst on the scene (though the extent of the fallout remained to be seen). Less than a month later, God would withdraw His presence and comfort from me and my cousin would die a horrible sudden death two months later. In short, this was in that very intense upheaval period between all those things, and my notes from that class are a unique snapshot of a very short time in my life where despite all the crap I still retained some true faith that it was for good (which left when my cousin died). This was a fleeting moment in my spiritual life, though one can very easily see the torment already in my head.

We had to write a total of six songs for the class. Because I was so completely overwhelmed, I turned out six of the worst songs I have ever written in my entire life, and because of the way everything panned out (in terms of stress, abandonment, and the subsequent loss of inspiration that still haunts me), they have, so far, turned out to be the last. I vaguely remember the concepts behind two or three of them, but the one that stands out to me is the one I wrote for Brittney.

It was composed in a rush before I had really had time to process her death so it was cheesy as heck and because my piano skills are crap the accompaniment was only a couple of token chords in the background just to say it was a song. But I still remember the metaphor I used and I remember the prof in his feedback asking if I wrote poetry because it sounded like I do. I remember feeling incredibly honoured that he would even ask me that -- this was also two years to the week since I had discovered the magic that is Daniel Amos and the songwriting of my artistic hero Terry Scott Taylor (who is nothing if not poetic).

Reading these notes, I was surprised how much hope in God I still retained at that time. Most of the terrible things had happened already by this point. If my cousin hadn't died and God hadn't withdrawn His presence from me, it would have been all uphill from there. Reading those notes made me feel, for the first time, very disconnected with who I used to be. This girl who wrote those notes was hurting but she hoped through the tears. For better or for worse, I am not like that anymore. Hope is a faded memory. I am very conscious of the fact that I have put up a wall to protect myself and nobody is tearing it down -- not even me. Maybe if the wall is strong enough God can't get through to hurt me anymore. It's destroying my fledgling performing arts career (because not only can nothing get in, nothing can get out), but what does that matter anyway? There's no hope for any of that.

Music Day - Morningstar

One of my favourite Terry Scott Taylor lyrics EVER is Daniel Amos' song When Worlds Collide. It's a beautiful lyric, from the perspective of God to those He loves. This is a notoriously difficult angle to write from -- so rife with potential pitfalls that most songwriters rarely attempt it and those who do usually make it so contrived it's unlistenable. Terry Taylor, however, is 1. not out to write a Number One hit, and 2. a thinking man -- which in this case translates into 'fantastic songwriter' -- and as a result his take on it is probably the closest one out there to how it actually is.

Not long after that song appeared on DA's Vox Humana album in 1984, Terry Taylor produced an album for a little band called D.O.X. that made two albums and disappeared. Even though he only wrote two of the songs on it (the band took care of the rest), his influence is ALL OVER that album. I keep thinking it's a lost DA record (compare with DA's Fearful Symmetry album from the same year). You can even hear Terry Taylor, Rob Watson (DA keyboardist), and Tim Chandler (DA bassist) in the background vocals in some of the songs. This influence extends to the songwriting of Mark de la Bretonne (D.O.X. frontman), and nowhere is this more evident than in the album closer, Morningstar.

Title: Morningstar
Artist: D.O.X.
Album: D.O.X. (Defenders Of The Cross)
Year: 1986
iTunes here; YouTube here.

The song opens with a brief but crisp description of loneliness and twisted love in the big city, enough to paint a picture of a heart's desolation. And then it segues into what is clearly the voice of God, pining over an unrequited love (hint: that's all humans), much in the style of the aforementioned When Worlds Collide (though admittedly, Morningstar is not as tender -- I mean, it has rock guitars).

The real payoff here is in the final minute of the song, when some genius (who, I suspect, bears the initials T.S.T. but I could be wrong) decided to layer bits of the first verse with the chorus and the result is heart-wrenching. It stopped me in my tracks when I first heard it.

Sit down. Close your eyes. Breathe. Listen.

I walk the streets alone
I call your name...

Power To The Young

Have you ever noticed that in all those Buzzfeed articles and other assorted Facebook-clogging 'news services' posts, they always emphasize it when someone is young?

'Amazing Six-Year-Old Sings Adele Better Than Adele.'

'Worldwide Ocean Cleanup Project Headed Up By Twenty-One-Year Old.'

'This Kid's Eminem Cover Is The Most Inspiring Thing Ever.'

Why? Why are you only good at something if you're young, if you're a prodigy?

This has been eating away at me for some time now.

See, the thing is: I'm not that old. I'm still in my early twenties. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I have another sixty or so years to go on this planet. So why do I already feel so much like a has-been that I actually have flashes of suicidal thoughts? What in the world would possess an intelligent and fairly skilled college-educated twentysomething with a close family and a good group of friends to even have the passing thought of suicide?

I feel irrelevant. Like I'm too old to be of any use to anybody anymore. I don't want my name on Buzzfeed or any of those other crappy 'news' sites (then there would definitely be some suicidal thoughts going on), but I want to be needed. I want to be able to touch people's lives. But I'm already too old. I expected to feel this way when I'm in my sixties, not my twenties. I literally just got out of school and already I'm useless. I haven't even had a chance to prove myself yet. I have nothing to grow into. My life is already over and I never got the chance to live.

Please... stop perpetuating this culture of 'only the young can be good at anything' and 'only the young are worth our time.' The young haven't had time to develop and perfect their craft and/or skills. The old have been toiling for years and know exactly how to get the results they want -- but they've already been silenced. We as a culture don't give them that chance. They have one shot of shallow brilliance at age seven and then we cast them aside before they get the chance to really grow into their promise. Look at... yes, I'm bringing him into this... Terry Scott Taylor. This man has been a professional songwriter for forty years. That's twice as long as I've even been alive. And while, yes, his early output with Daniel Amos (Horrendous Disc; ¡Alarma! Chronicles) was pretty freaking good (unlike most people's early output), you listen to later albums such as Dig Here Said The Angel (2013), the Swirling Eddies' The Midget, The Speck, And The Molecule (2007), or even MotorCycle (1993), and you can't help but notice a rich maturity pervading the entire project -- in the choice of words, in the choice of topic, in the approach to the arrangements, the musicianship, the vocal development, the crafting of the mood... everything.

Are we really so embroiled in hipster culture that we all want to be the first to discover the next Mozart and therefore are trying to promote younger and younger people in an attempt to say 'I knew of them first'? What does it do to the kids whose skill you're exploiting before it's ripe? What does it do to the older and truly accomplished who are consistently ignored? What does it do to normal twentysomethings like me who already feel like there's nothing left for us to give and so we might as well just give up everything?

Everybody loses.

And maybe this is why art is, in general, in such a deplorable state. There's no maturity, only tricks and explosions. And when art suffers, so does society.

Everybody loses.

Day Twenty - National Choreography Month

So after doing pretty much nothing for the entire second week, I went on a huge tear and choreographed three dances in two days. Two of them I covered in the previous post (Day 18), but then I started and finished another tap solo: Lecrae's Chase That. (This is what I meant when I said it was totally feasible for me to catch up on a three-days-per-piece timeline in the space of several days.)

Out of all the projects I had planned for this month, this one probably scared me the most (with the possible exception of Rattle Me, Shake Me), just because of the sheer volume of content in the song. Of course, being a rap song, it's packed with words, but that also means it's packed with rhythm and it covers a LOT of ground lyrically. Rap, as an art form, is adept at blending metaphors and imagery, using pivot words to take you from one mental image to another (this is also what I love about the songwriting of Steve Taylor), which kind of stretches your brain -- as it's supposed to. But it's also tricky for a choreographer like me who likes to match the mood of the movement to the mood of the lyrics. The music, being a canned beat (as is traditional with rap), isn't much help mood-wise either -- it's more or less the same loop for the entire song.

(Incidentally, this is why I'm not as into rap as I could be -- I love the style of lyric-writing, but it always kills me a little bit how uncreative the musical arrangements tend to be. Lecrae has been known to use violins -- Chase That is one such track, in fact -- and seriously that makes a huge difference, but as far as I know, he's the only one seriously experimenting in musical terms. That said, I realise that the main point in rap is the lyrical prowess and it would be difficult to keep a great arrangement from overshadowing the lyrics. It'll be really interesting to see how the genre develops and matures over the next twenty years or so as future rappers build on the work of artists like Lecrae.)

Anyway... the dance: Actually, I've done so much choreography in the past three days that I'm not too clear on which one this was. But out of all the musical climaxes I've tried to choreograph in various disciplines over the past four years or so, this was one of the ones I think I actually managed to capture in motion. I'm actually very proud of myself, particularly as tap isn't my first dance language. I'm noticing, too, that I'm getting better at this pacing thing -- not overusing things as much and thereby killing the climax when I use the overdone genius idea yet again (after putting it in every chorus).

This piece was intentionally a solo. Although my relationship with God is not great right now, this has always been my goal in my art -- to glorify God. And even though I've spent the last two days (in particular; the past year in general) mostly lashing out in fury that God isn't listening to me, there's a tiny part of me that still wants to give God the glory in my art. There's still a little piece that wants to chase His glory and not mine, and the chorus of this song is kind of an adopted mission statement (the story in the verses, obviously, bears little resemblance to my own story).