Stop The Madness: A Christmas Plea to Pop Musicians in 2007
Now that Christmas Day has gone and the Holiday Season is coming to a close, I would like to send out a call to all the pop musicians of the world as they contemplate their projects for 2007. If you are the sort of artist who likes your new releases to be bound by some unifying conceptual theme, then good on you. Better to be packaging songs together on the basis of some grand idea your heart yearns to express than just to knock out a bunch of disconnected, crass, three-and-a-half-minute attempts to monetize your personal brand. You’ve got all these deep ideas welling up in your soul, and you have to get them out somehow, right? We know how it is. Go to town! Put out those topical projects like the heavy, deeply affected artist that you are.
Just let me make one request of you: please don’t make a Christmas CD. I know you believe at the bottom of your heart—you just know it to be true—that what some of those dusty old carols need is a hip new treatment by your favorite musician. The real problem, you catch yourself thinking, is that Hark! The Herald Angels Sing lacks syncopation and an awesome clarinet solo. Or you wonder aloud whether what O Little Town of Bethlehem has been waiting for all these years is your deep, lusty vocals and a disco beat in the bridge.
Oh, and a bridge. It never did have much of a bridge, did it?
I urge you not to do it. I know you, and possibly the market with you, are very impressed with your talents. Maybe you sell a lot of music. Maybe, if you’re a Christian musician (a group for whom the Christmas CD temptation must be particularly difficult to withstand), people tell you how significant your Music Ministry is through all of the conversions, re-dedications, and heartfelt moments of authentic worship it fosters. But think for a moment what you’re up against. I really don’t mean to be all Dickensian about this, but Christmas is a pretty big holiday. Do you really think you, even in your most pensive Piano Solo mood, can possibly capture the significance the day holds to most of us?
Forget the theological import of the season. Your chosen musical form is more or less unable to meet the demands asked of it by serious meditation on the doctrine of the incarnation, which is fine as far as it goes. The problem is that even mere family gatherings, decorations, gifts, cookies-like-mom-used-to-make, parties, memories, and ubiquitous good cheer will probably price you out of the market. You are simply bound to sound cheesy.
And whatever you do, please don’t write anything original. If overdriven guitars are bad for Good Christian Men, Rejoice, then whatever ditty you were contemplating about How Much Christmas Means To You is pretty much guaranteed to be worse. Nothing personal.
Are you discouraged yet? Good. But don’t give up hope! Keep on planning your next project, and be sure to make it something to which you can do some justice. There are lots of topics. Just pick one, as long as it’s not Christmas. Maybe how you felt about your last boyfriend or girlfriend. Anything.
Of course there are a few of you who are actually talented enough to pull it off. Some of you actually can shepherd a classic Christmas carol into the contemporary context with true freshness, sensitivity to tradition, and a hint of transcendence, or maybe even write a new song that hits the mark as well as the existing ones have. But then, if you’re one of those people, it never would have occurred to you to take my advice anyway.
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- Posted by Tim on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 11:21:41 pm PST
- Category: Culture
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18 Responses to “Stop The Madness: A Christmas Plea to Pop Musicians in 2007”
NPR is good for something. “Fresh Air” this year afforded me the opportunity to hear “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” as performed by Twisted Sister, in the context of an interview with its 95-year old composer/lyricist.
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 27th, 2006 at 2:57 pm |Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Twisted Sister? Man, I’m just not gonna take that anymore. (No! I’m not gonna take it!)
Actually I think there are some songs that lend themselves to popification more than others. I’m not sure the unholy union you describe would work, but that song seems harder to profane than most Christmas music, most of the work already having been done for us in the original.
Not that it’s horrible or nothin’, but you know what I mean.
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 27th, 2006 at 4:53 pm |You know, Christmas songs are not the only victims of celebrity-driven remakes. If I hear one more rendition of “Open the Eyes of My Heart” or “Here I am to Worship” on Postive, Encouraging, radio….. I might start listening to KBCO.
Oh, wait,
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 28th, 2006 at 9:13 am |I DO listen to KBCO….
Well, you’ve picked a couple of my non-favorites there! “Here I Am to Worship” is my favorite example of meta-worship music: it’s not really about God as much as it is about us worshiping God (and doing a really good job at it).
And given my antipathy worship music videos, I think some room can be made for compromise when it comes to “Open the Eyes of My Heart.” The song flippantly (IMO) says “I want to see you high and lifted up/Standing in the light of your glory.” Well, I think we might better impress the holiness of God upon our people if we used video from the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark along with that line. “I want to see you…standing in the light of your glory”=melting Nazi faces. Sweet idea, huh? Too bad it’s not originally mine.
Okay, fine. If you don’t like that, we can just skip the song altogether.
P.S. Ready for the next snow?
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 28th, 2006 at 9:48 am |Is the next line, “So I can fa-all on my fa-ace as one dead?”
Guess not, huh?
Traditional hymn and psalm based worship might not survive my lifetime outside the hyper-RPWs, but I can at least give thanks that I’m out of the “contemporary worship” loop. Let’s just say that though it might not all be bad and I’m not prepared to mount an offensive wherever it’s found, I’m glad it’s not my battle.
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 28th, 2006 at 3:32 pm |More snow? …. I’m reading books for my J-Term class and having a second cup of tea… bring it on.
Have you heard the new song,
Check me out O God
(kidding)
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 28th, 2006 at 4:59 pm |sorry for the double comment.
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 28th, 2006 at 5:03 pm |What’s the verification page thing that sometimes comes up when I post to your blog? The .jpg that goes with it doesnt show up so all I see is the tag and cannot enter anything therefore (that would pass the test) in the box. Is this a metaphor for total depravity?
And the hyper-RPWs are not folks I want to emulate. That’s obvious, though; as of this date, I have Christmas lights on my blog!
“I’m glad it’s not my battle,” you say. You know what’s wonderful? It’s kind of not my battle anymore either. I am making it a point to enjoy this season of rest, but I think it’s still fresh enough in my mind to warrant the occasional outburst.
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 28th, 2006 at 5:23 pm |Susan:
I think that page is what people get when the anti-spam system moves their comment to moderation. It should display an image with hard-to-read letters and numbers for you to type in to prove you’re a human, but I’ve never seen it myself. (Wordpress is always happy with my comments, since I own the blog. : ) ) If the CAPTCHA feature is broken, I may just turn that off.
If you see it again, I think you can safely ignore it, but you’ll have to wait until I find your moderated comment and approve it for posting. The next time I see a comment of yours in moderation I’ll pay more attention to what’s causing them to be flagged, so hopefully I can adjust that setting in your favor. If it’s happening to you, it’ll happen to somebody else. I get almost no false negative spam comments, so opening up the system won’t kill me.
Sorry for the inconvenience, and enjoy the tea and studying.
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 28th, 2006 at 5:39 pm |Yes, the above was written with the understanding that neither you nor I want to follow the hyper-RPW’s. Something about, “Let’s order our worship in a fashion that reflects the biblical meaning and purpose of worship” rather than “let’s extrapolate a decontextualized rule from scripture that acts as a hedge against ever ‘doing anything wrong’ while worshiping” appeals to me, and I suspect to you as well.
Not, mind you, that I think that RPW in a larger, general sense, is not a good way to view the issue. Should we make things up and hope they’ll pass muster, or should we ask God (by means of seeing what He’s already said) how to go about things? Seems like the answer to that is fairly straightforward. I remain a confessional Presbyterian. However, it’s when you go beyond the P in RPW and make it the “regulative sentence that dictates every move we make” that you get into trouble and start coming up with forms of worship that make me say, “Did God really intend that worship be about not doing a lot of things we’re commanded to do all the rest of the time? Did God even intend that worship BE about not doing things?”
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 29th, 2006 at 7:49 am |Couldn’t have put it better myself, pentamom. Two thumbs up.
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 29th, 2006 at 9:30 am |RPW = Reformed Presbyterian ?
But golly gee…”Open the eyes of my heart” makes me feel all warm and giddy inside…
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 29th, 2006 at 12:18 pm |RPW=Regulative Principle of Worship. The idea is briefly summarized in WCF chapter XXI section 1:
This means something roughly between these extremes:
Also, add item zero to that list: “nothing.” Some people who claim to subscribe to the WCF really dumb the RPW idea down into oblivion, such that things like worship drama are accommodated. Which is fine at the end of the day, but at some point you have to start saying that you deny the RPW entirely and you take exception to the Confession on this point, rather than pretending that everything is fine and you love every jot and tittle of the document.
This is a point of Reformed culture which can get very, very silly. My personal take is than an RPW Lite is a good idea, but obsessing over exclusive Psalmody is a pretty quick route to Sixteenth Century Swiss Ghetto-ism.
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 29th, 2006 at 1:47 pm |Correction: Seventeenth Century Scots Ghettoism. Genevan worship was rather more “liberal” than the later Scots version, though the Swiss did have an (understandable, and maybe even contextually appropriate) case of Roman hangover. Calvin’s ideas on worship, which didn’t always fly with his civil masters, were rather more about “doing” than “not doing.”
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 29th, 2006 at 1:54 pm |Thank you! You’re right. “16th Century Swiss Ghetto” is a stock phrase of mine I use to refer to the errors of overly insular Reformed culture, but I really should have upped it by 120 years and a thousand miles (give or take) to the northwest.
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 29th, 2006 at 2:44 pm |Soooo…meditate to levitate probably doesn’t jive with the WCF types
.
Comment Permalink | Posted on December 29th, 2006 at 6:25 pm |GRrrrrumblbbllblblllll. A clumsy guy surprises you with a rare witticism dismissing a foolish CCM song and you can’t even give him props. Take a note: anything which comes out of my mouth and makes you grin is copywrited material, both henceforth and retroactively.
I only heard this song once (on a Public Radio Station, too!), but found its chorus to be transcendent. But you’re right, Tim. Something tells me Mr. Cockburn wouldn’t bother to read your whole post.
Comment Permalink | Posted on January 4th, 2007 at 1:38 pm |Should have known that was an adeodatusism. It was too good not to be.
Comment Permalink | Posted on January 8th, 2007 at 1:02 am |