Adele and Contemporary Christian Worship Songs

Recently our contemporary worship team at Emmanuel Enid (e.g., Refuge Band) spent a creative planning time discussing the possibility of Emmanuel beginning to write its own music. We have a very talented team of musicians and writers, particularly when you consider the population of cattle outnumbers humans by 100 times in western Oklahoma.

I registered a concern to our worship leaders that though I enjoy the stylistic approach of contemporary Christian worship, I sometimes wonder about the words of the songs we sing. I enjoy contemporary worship because it is not vapid, meaning "missing life or energy" in its lyrical style, but sometimes the words of contemporary worship songs seem void of content and meaning.

In response to my concern, I was told that there is a 'beat' or 'style' of contemporary worship that seems to drive the train in writing new music. The phrase Golden Ratio was used, and I discovered that Christian song writers will often create a rhythmic style first, a musical formula that sounds good, and then will add words later. It's one of the reasons, I was told, that popular contemporary worship sounds similar. I responded that I don't necessarily object to songs sounding similar--classical music carries a distinct lyrical sound--as much as I object to the words of contemporary worship songs which sometimes lack meaning, depth or theological content. 

I suggested a solution to the dilemma might be to go to Google books and find some wonderful ancient hymns, songs rich in theological and Christological content, adapt them to modern English and begin writing contemporary worship songs around the meaning and content of words. I suggested that if we write music ourselves, we shift the way the songs are written: Words will always be primary, lyrical sound secondary. 

I even offered an illustration. There is a hymn written in Latin nearly two hundred years ago (1837) by Reverend John Chandler of Oxford, England. The song, now in public domain, is available on Google books, It is based on Psalm 59:12, "O look upon me and be merciful to me." The song's English translation (page 13) goes like this:

Lord, on the Cross Thine Arms

were stretched,

To draw Thy people nigh; 

O grant us then that cross to love,

And in those arms to die.

All glory to the Father be,

All glory to the Son,

All glory to the Holy Ghost, to Thee, 

While endless ages run.

I suggested a new song be written using the same concepts of God's effectual love in drawing us to the cross, the importance of never abandoning faith and love for the cross, and the blessing of dying while resting in the love of the One who died for us. In the newer version I offered, I changed the "Thine" and "Thy" to "You" and "Your's," and I also changed the objects of God's love in the hymn from the third person plural to the second person singular. 

The Refuge team was quiet and respectful, but I could sense their mental wheels were turning. Mark Twain once said, "It's not what you don't know that hurts you. It's what you do know that ain't so." Modern contemporary worship leaders might need to rethink (in my opinion) how songs are written. We have the good news. Let's be sure that we always sing about the Christ who made the news.

My digital copy of Time Magazine came on my phone today. The cover story is on Adele. In reading the article I came across four paragraphs that sought to explain the counter-cultural popularity of Adele (emphasis mine).

Much of what’s on the radio is cooked up by A-list producers and songwriters who churn out hooks, snippets of melody, lyrics and song concepts. Their work is then mined for precious No. 1 hits. It’s a sound rooted in the late ’90s, when artists like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys began recording tracks written by superproducers like Max Martin and his Stockholm team of songwriters, who expertly blended American R&B and European dance music. Nearly two decades later, Martin is still shaping hits for artists including Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.

Top songs are also often written to track, which means a producer makes a beat, then a songwriter listens to it and attempts to generate words that fit that beat, sometimes singing nonsense until the language begins to take shape. It’s more about how lyrics sound than what they mean. This has become a bedrock part of the industry, as laid out in John Seabrook’s recent book The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory. And it’s how you end up with something like Ariana Grande’s dance-pop confection “Break Free”: “I only wanna die alive … Now that I’ve become who I really am.”

"Break Free" is a popular contemporary secular song with stupid words which are void of meaning. Some popular contemporary worship songs seemingly follow the pattern of  "Break Free" -  amazing lyrical sound and emotion, but void in meaning and content. The next two paragraphs explain how Adele does it differently.

Adele writes the way music used to be written, decades ago, before that teen-pop boom of the late ’90s. “I’m not precious about writing credits—it’s whatever makes the best song,” she says. “But I can’t do that. I can’t write a song based on a track.” Her songs aren’t a Frankenstein’s monster of her best ideas, either. “I write a song from beginning to end,” she says. “I don’t go in sections. It’s a story.” Even though she, too, recorded songs for 25 with Martin, their cut—“Send My Love (To Your New Lover)”—doesn’t have the stitched-together feel of many radio hits.

Greg Kurstin, who co-wrote and produced “Hello,” says Adele’s process is increasingly rare. “She would start out with actual lyrics,” he says. “I don’t see that in the pop world.” Accordingly, Adele’s songs stand out against much of what’s popular now. “I’m not saying my album is incredible, but there’s conviction in it,” she says. “

My hope is that we can see a movement toward writing contemporary worship songs with an emphasis on the content of what is being sung. Maybe we can be a part of a new breed of contemporary Christian songwriters who begin with the the authentic gospel story of  the Person and work of Jesus Christ. 

Gospel power is not so much about the way we feel as it is about the way we think.