Listening to Amy Grant’s sublime “Soft And Tenderly” off her masterful Christian update of her 2002 album Hymns And Faith, Be Still And Know… Hymns And Faith, I found myself wondering why Christian Contemporary Music is so terrible. I’ve tried, and I really have tried, to get behind CCM… not out of any religious convictions but out of a sense of responsibility to take my own prejudice out to the woodshed and give it a fair shake. CCM is the equivalent of porn soundtracks in the 1970s. It sounds like the real thing but pretty soon you wonder what all the heavy breathing is about.
For every David Crowder or LIVETOBREATH, there are dozens of Hillsong stalwarts acting like they are about to go clear into Jesus arms.The problem is, music doesn’t lend itself to religious hysteria and religious hysteria is the sound being sold:they are trying to uplift the uplift and the result is a sense of feelings being feigned. If you add to that dearth of songwriting ability what you get is a consistent sense of a sound that doesn’t really work too well -songs that should, actually have to, stand on their own two feet simply don’t: whether Jesus, the songs fall apart, if we weren’t being extolled we wouldn’t be doing anything.
Christianity isn’t a bad subject for rock and roll (or Gospel) as such. Indeed, it is a great one and the most ancient music often had a religious theme. It is the urge to contemporary, it is the faking of rock that harms CCM. Dylan means it on Shot Of Love, he handles the complexity and stalwartness of faith, Amy Grant is as interested in the music as the sentiment earlier this week on Be Still And Know, the point isn’t just evangelism, it isn’t to convert but to perform art. Faith is not art, art is not faith.
CCM is to conform teens to a pop Jesus. There are better ways to brainwash.