Pay It Forward
Last week my blog friend had a little contest where he was offering some lucky fool a copy of the new Delirious? CD “Kingdom of Comfort” and I was fortunate enough to win. In between entering the contest and receiving the prize, I was able to get my own copy of the CD somewhere else. This is a great CD and it’s been on regular rotation in my office for the last few days.
So in the spirit of Haley Joel Osment I’m going to pay it forward. I’ll use the same rules as the Mud Puppy did -
Just leave me a comment with your take on the state of CCM (Contemporary Christian Music). How do you define CCM? Is it good? Is it bad? Does it lack creativity? Does it have a place in your life? How has it effected you personally? Who’s your favorite?
I’ll pick a winner at random on Thursday afternoon from the comments and send the CD out on Friday.
UPDATE: Congrats to Mark Marsella for winning. I chose his comment using random.org. Thanks Mud Puppy for providing the CD in the first place!
I’m not entering this contest! :p
But I will have my thoughts on this subject very soon on the blog.
And if you don’t feel too good about your odds, feel free to cover your bases by trying to win over at Thoughts of a Worshiper as well. You’re bound to end up with a free CD somewhere along the way.
oh! pick me! at random of course.
This is what I said on mudpuppy’s post…
I’ve always been a huge deliriou5? fan, woo hoo! PIck me.
I’m not a huge CCM fan. The majority of the music that I grew up purchasing though was made by ‘Christian’ artists though. I think it’s in the same state as the current secular music industry. They’ve built their business around a few select major artists, but now people aren’t as interested in that as they used to be.
Even when I bought my Christian CDs growing up, it wasn’t the popular acts of the day. I was buying Five Minute Walk Records artists, and tooth and nail artists.
I think like the majors, CCM has perfected a formula for creating music and promoting artists, and people (at least those in my generation) are tired of it and getting good music from wherever they can find it, whether secular or not.
With CCM there’s always been the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Most times we like to pick on the bad and the ugly, while neglecting to compliment the good. Everyone’s a critic. I’m not necessarily a huge fan of CCM in general, but my wife is so I tolerate it.
First, there is nothing new under the sun. So, this quest for total originality by artists is almost absurd. Can we do things fresh and inspired? Sure. Has it been done before? Most likely in some shape, form or fashion. So in my opinion, there are hardly any totally original artists in ANY genre of music, let alone in CCM.
Second, the music biz, CCM or not, is a business. They exist to make money. Labels exist to sell records, not to promote the gospel. I like Keith Green’s philosophy, just give it away. But at the same time, I’d sure like to make a living making music!
Third, there are some songs few and far in between that affect me profoundly. Since I grew up in an “all christian music” home, most of my early life through highschool was pretty much influenced musically by CCM music. There are others that aren’t christian that I’ve been strongly impacted by, but I do owe a lot of my musical roots and perception of the arts as a whole to CCM. Thanks.
Fourth, my favorite CCM artist would definitely be Third Day. Not necessarily the radio friendly almost southern pop rock Third Day we hear every other song on CCM radio, but the Third Day of Consuming Fire and Blackbird lore. Those were the days…
@Russ: Third Day was my first real introduction to a new way to worship. They will always have a special place in my heart, and those early albums definitely rock my face off!!!
Good comments – let’s see if we get any original material from people who didn’t comment on MP’s site :)
Portorikan – Five Minute Walk! Nice. I’ve been a big fan of Justin McRoberts for a long time and remember when he was on FMW.
Russ – Agreed on Third Day. Their first record that came out on Gray Dot Records right around the same time as the Jars Of Clay record and everyone (I mean everyone!) at my high school was in to those two records that year.
CCM has been over-saturated w/ the same-sounding bands, overdone covers of the same worship songs over and over, and original sound and creativity just don’t happen much … does the current state of “CCM” reflect itself in the reality that “CCM Mag” has just shut down their print magazine?
I wanna win Delirous!
Fred
I’ve been out of the whole music scene for a while, especially CCM. But I believe when it comes to corporate worship music and CCM I believe the lines may be blurring, as well as some CCM and what we call “secular” music.
Music tells stories, moves us, engages us, mystifies us, and is extremely spiritual no matter how we classify it.
I’m trying not to get too far out of the music scene and the CCM scene, but right now that’s as far into as I can go. I do however love delirious and think that they have always been close to the cutting edge of music, and were definitely on the edge of CCM.
I’ve been a fan of Delirious ever since I saw them on the ‘King of Fools’ tour.
Stu G’s guitar was out of tune. “It was in tune when I bought it” he says. It was great.
CCM – I’m kinda disappointed in the state of CCM but I’m not surprised. In our cookie-cutter, commercialism culture, it tries to appeal to a very broad ausience. You can’t really achieve a great variety of music on a station that has to appeal to every demographic simultaneously. I can put it on in the car and not have to worry about what my 2 year old is going to hear. So in that one aspect it succeeds.
So yeah it lacks creativity and originality. It’s as true in the secular industry as it is in the Christian industry; the more ‘creative’ and ‘artistic’ artists don’t dwell long in the spotlight. We tend to see it more in CCM because of it’s smaller, ‘fishbowl’ nature. There’s less space for artists that don’t sell huge amounts of records. The CCM artists that sell a lot of records still don’t sell all that many compared to say, Paul McCartney or Radiohead. I can’t remember the last time I heard of a CCM album going platinum. It’s a much smaller market so it can’t support as many artists.
Well, I did a whole series on defining CCM at http://www.theblahblah.wordpress.com, but I’ll give my comments here because I want that CD. To me, CCM is one small sector of the music world where Christians are influencing art. CCM is music that is made by Christians (usually) and marketed specifically for Christians. There’s some good stuff out there, but it’s pretty hard to find, because the whole idea of CCM is to market bands, not create art.
It’s a confusing term, because Christian Contemporary Music is often not very Christian (Phillips, Craig, and Dean are heretics, business is work not ministry, etc.) nor very contemporary. Most CCM artists seem pre-packaged with the right words, images, instrumentation, and hair styles to gain a share of the Christian market. They aren’t contemporary so much as they’re copying what WAS contemporary five years ago.
CCM is dissapointing to me because most artists want to 1) reach Christians to encourage and minister to them, and 2) reach non-Christians with the Gospel, and it fails on both levels. Christians aren’t ministered to but entertained (sometimes not even that), and non-Christians would never listen to a CCM group by choice. They don’t want to be preached at using music that was cool 10 years ago.
Well, I should stop before my rant gets too long. There are some good groups within CCM, especially the worship stuff, but all-in-all I think it’s an industry that is floundering artistically, evangelistically, ministerially, and, for the most part, spiritually. It’s in need of some change, that’s for sure.
I like CCM and listen to it on a fairly regular basis (along with Classic Rock).
I do sometimes get frustrated with the lack of creativity and the cheesiness of it. But I am cautiously optimistic about the future of CCM. I think it is breaking out of the let’s-do-popular-music-with-Christian-lyrics” funk, and that is a good sign. Hopefully, lessons are being learned, and we will continue to see a better product.
My 14 year old son, who is an avid listener of CCM, commented as I tossed in an “old” CD by the now departed Daily Planet…
“wow, who’s that, Dad.. I can’t believe you’re actually listening to something other than your usual Worship Stuff… that’s really cool, the worship Stuff all sounds the same”
*sigh* I’m old enough to remember some of the first fruits of Christ-based music back, way back, when it seemed more like a ministry and money wasn’t the goal. Keith Green, Phil Driscol, Leon Patillo, Amy Grant, Steve Camp, Bryan Duncan and others all seemed more like pioneers in a new movement at the time that didn’t sound or feel like what the secular stations were playing.
I am still in some terms fairly new to CCM. And for the most part I would have to agree with the idea that you are seeing more business than ministry showing through as we move along. Deluxe Editions and Limited Editions or whatever. How many versions of Casting Crowns last CD were there? Still not sure. So that stuff turns me off a bit. But I will say that 99% of the music I listen to is CCM and I love the fact that it is readily available. It is a big part of my life and I find the messages, however repetitive at times, to be positive overall.
That being said there are a few artists that do try to push the envelope and try new things. This is refreshing to me when I come across it. Guys like Jimmy Needham and Shawn McDonald are great for that. They are different than the mass sound of CCM. I also appreciate guys like Baloche who try to move it forward with each album.
So, overall, it needs to be a business to an extent to grow the possibilities for the genre but that in turn does bring some of the downside that I and others have mentioned!
Tom
Wow – some great comments here. Sweet.
Fred – I think the demise of CCM Magazine is very telling.
Alex – I feel like a bit of an outsider in the music scene today, too. I also feel like Delirious has really got it going on!
Christopher – That quote from Stu G is genius.
Jake – I love your thoughts. I also now love your blog.
Jeff – Hope is a great thing, no? :)
Mark – Daily Planet!! Love it!! Their lead singer, Jesse Butterworth, released a solo project a while ago.
Tom – Yes, special editions drive me C-R-A-Z-Y!!
I’ve taken to listening to CCM a good bit over the past year as the local station has increased their signal strength. Mostly, though, I listen to “Christian” music on my iPod. I pull in recent artists in CCM, older stuff (like the Third Day and Jars mentioned above), worship music, etc.
I think a lot of folks are right about there not being a lot of originality or creativity in most of the radio airplay stuff today. But there are still a lot of folks doing Christian music out of the main stream. Take a walk through MySpace sometime and see what you might find.
Referencing the CCM magazine, each month they spotlight several bands/artists that are probably not going to hit the CCM radio stations or the local Christian bookstore.
In the end, the size of the market and the fact that most of the consumers are play-it-safe folks who have money and want comfort/safety in music drives CCM to be what it is. And to probably stay that way for a while.
Oh yeah, getting the CD would be nice too :-)
Bubba
shoot it is 11:58 and i want to get into the draw for the CD
I agree with lots of the stuff people have posted
Hope I win.
11:59 phew
I don’t want the CD but I’d like to leave my comments (in fact, I was fortunate enough to interview them recently – I co-host a Christian morning talk show aptly called – “The Morning Show” – clever huh?).
I think the biggest problem I have with the CCM scene is that, like that of the secular music world, it’s highly controlled by the higher-ups. Making decisions that the artists normally wouldn’t make themselves. Styles, song configuration, etc.
Because of this and other reasons, many artists are going independent (probably the most recent-prominent one would be Switchfoot). They started their own indie label and are making the music that they want to make, when they want to make it. I think we’ll see a lot more of these things happen in the music world, especialy in CCM. Which is a good thing for the artist and the consumer. The consumer gets great music and the artist can control how much goes out and potentially how much comes in. The only downfall is the music industry as a whole, higher-ups losing jobs, etc.
That is my two-cents. You can check out a blog I wrote about my interview with Delirious on my personal blog – http://www.boandmelissa.blogspot.com.
Blessings.
Sorry wrong blog address (no www).
http://boandmelissa.blogspot.com