Christian Music: Genres

One Christian Genre vs Christian Versions of Every Genre

I.

“To understand a man, you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty.” Napoleon Bonaparte

One way to think about the Christian music enjoyed and employed by predominantly white, middle class Western Christians is to see it as the repurposing of that demographic’s musical tastes for church services.

The musicians of the contemporary white Western Protestant church grew up listening to a lot of the same music, and so when it came to their turn to write hymns, they naturally used the musical language they had acquired. Why does so much contemporary Christian music sound like 80s U2? Because if you were a Christian growing up in the 80s, there’s a good chance U2 was one of the few bands you, your family and friends all listened to. In the explicitly for-congregational-singing music like Michael W. Smith, Matt Redman, or Stuart Townend and the Gettys, certain musical trends persist, with a few variations. Acoustic-guitar-led, major-key and simple-chord dominated, three or four verses with happy-happy-sad-happy narrative arcs and easy choruses. In other words, the musical tastes of the children of the 80s was adapted to the liturgical and practical needs of white Western Protestant congregations. This phenomenon was repeated for the next generation by groups like Hillsong, who moved away from guitar-piano-bass-keyboard-drums music into synthesiser-multiple vocalist-ambient-stadium pop. The Townend template remains in many hymn-writing groups, probably in continuing recognition of the capabilities of regular church musicians.

What about the not-for-church Christian music? The appearance of the category of ‘professional musician’ as a career in its own right, and acceptance of this type of figure as legitimate in most middle-class Christian circles, led to the appearance of curious musical expressions. The ‘Warped’ tour was a rock tour that travelled the USA annually from 1995 until 2019, and focused initially on punk rock music before morphing to include pop punk, metalcore and emo bands, from Blink-182 to My Chemical Romance to Paramore to Relient K. If you don’t know Relient K, they released nine studio albums plus several EPs, two Christmas albums (a dead giveaway of Christian identity), reached #15 on the US Billboard charts and sold over 2 million records. Relient K first played the Warped tour in 2005, alongside the likes of Fall Out Boy, Underoath and A Day To Remember, making them the most musically and lyrically ‘Christian’ band on the lineup by a huge margin. Another Christian band, Switchfoot, provided a Spiderman Movie soundtrack, signed to the mainstream Columbia Records, and had Mandy Moore sing one of their songs in the film ‘A Walk To Remember’. As you might expect, for much of their career Switchfoot have been pestered with questions about the meanings of their songs, whether they are ‘a christian band or a band of christians’, and the extent to which they are trying to preach through their music.

It is easy to see bands like Switchfoot and Relient K as making the same choices as songwriters like Michael W. Smith, in the sense that their music stands at the ‘safest’ or most ‘Christian’ end of the genre of which they are a part. Not too abrasive, not too aggressive, not too commercial or flippant, and with easy-to-understand lyrics. This is not to detract from their artistic merit as songwriters, simply to point out that, seen from a certain perspective, these groups perpetuate the idea that Christian music is just a softened, sanitised, sanctified version of the secular music from which it is born. The ideal for Christian music, in this context, is to occupy the most Christian position within a particular genre, so that non-Christians can see the non-stuffiness of their Christian peers, and so that Christians who don’t want to listen to hymns in their free time have alternative listening options.

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II.

I have a problem with this.

It spreads the idea that musical forms are neutral things, which can be made secular or sacred depending on the musicians performing them. Rock’n’roll is a pliable format, which can be corrupted by the likes of Led Zeppelin or made holy by Third Day. Rap can be associated with cultural evils through NWA and Stormzy or with holiness in the music of Shai Linne and, well, Stormzy. This, I think, is a pervasive idea and one which demonstrates just how strange the church’s position is in relation to the broader culture. Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones and The Sex Pistols were all boycotted and protested by conservative religious groups who objected to the lyrical content and lifestyle associated with the music, but also to the actual sound of the music itself. It wasn’t just “I am an Anti-Christ” that riled up the faithful, it was the snarling, bilious vocal performance of Jonny Rotten, the cacophony of badly played instruments distorted by feedback, and the overall musical picture the song conveyed.

In a strange way, the music that is favoured by both church-music and non-church-music Christian bands reflects an awareness of this point. There may be Christian rock, Christian rap, Christian pop, but is there any even remotely successful attempt at Christian punk? Is this not at least partly due to the fact that the music of The Sex Pistols is completely incompatible with a Christian worldview? The brilliance of The Sex Pistols is such that their ethos and ideas are expressed at every level: the lyrics, the vocal performance, the instrumentation, the chords and melodies, the aesthetics, even the band’s name. It is a holistic, coherent artistic whole. To try and repurpose their music with Christian lyrics would be like swapping the word ‘Scotland’ for the word ‘Poundland’ in ‘O Flower of Scotland’ and thinking you could get away with it.

If genres are not neutral things, if the choice of instruments and rhythms and themes that make up a genre express a particular way of seeing the world, should there not be a separate, Christian version of this? Or is there one already, the Hillsong universe, and I just don’t want to admit it?