Song: “Love was Stronger”
Year: 2015
So the other day, I
wrote a post about Audio Adrenaline coming back, only not with anyone who was
actually associated with Audio A before.
And I encourage you to read that.
I will not rant further about it here.
But since I was on the topic, I decided to take a listen to
the new “Audio A” song and give it a review.
I was curious as to what they sound like, and now I have a general idea,
and will proceed to rant about that
here.
It is frustrating to me (and I’m not alone here) that
Christian music constantly swirls around the drain of “praise and worship”
music rather than really trying to do something interesting with music. This genre of music has a name that is
terribly misleading, since it very rare praises or worships, but it is more
useful to describe the style rather than the content – a style really developed
by a group of people in Nashville, many of whom are not Christians, to be
something that could be sung quite easily in churches that are more concerned
with artificial emotionalism than biblical truth. The style is basic – usually four chords pop
songs with sing-able melodies and repetitive lyrics. It is the Top 40 of Christian music – most
appropriately compared to the worst that mainstream radio has to offer. There’s no thought, no musicianship, no craft
there. It’s four chords and something
that can be sung in worship (though shouldn’t be because of the content). It’s mindless.
And it’s this.
And the problem with it is not that it is “pop.” I happen to be a “pop” musician. There’s nothing wrong with pop music, done
properly. Some of the best music in the
last hundred years has been pop. In
fact, Audio A has almost always been a pop-rock band, and I liked their old
stuff a lot. The problem is the
artificial formulaic pop, which is the equivalent to a “paint by numbers”
picture.
I mean, I remember first hearing Audio A’s “We’re a Band,”
and it just drove the beat into you with a sledgehammer. It was simple, yeah, but it was unmistakable,
it was hard-edged and jagged, and I loved it.
This band has done pop, sure, and a few of their tunes were pretty bad
pop (“Big House” comes to mind), but even when it was, it wasn’t formulaic and
boring. “Big House” was not good, but it
was at very least distinct.
This new Audio A has put no life into this song, no
passion. It’s nothing but a formula of
what “praise and worship” is supposed to sound like. It’s unmemorable until the bridge, which is
only memorable because it sounds like Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida,” so I had that
much more interesting tune in my head while I listened to Audio A.
And by the way – that’s a case where a probably copied song
still comes out distinct and interesting because it has Coldplay written all
over it, from the first note on, even if it wasn’t really their original
melody. Even a cover song can be cool
and unique, while an original song can be unoriginal. I’m just not feeling anything that sounds
distinct or intriguing here.
The primary example of this is the lack of content or effort
in the chorus which is, in a very teeny-bop style, mostly an effort to extend
the word “love” into as many syllables as possible.
And my question is, is this how we approach the throne of
grace? Is this what we are bringing with
us as we come? “Lo-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-ve?”
The content of the
lyrics
And all that is very sad for the very reason that the rest
of the lyrics (besides the lo-uh-uh-ve of the chorus) are really good. There’s some very nice stuff going on
here! It’s all so Christ-focused, so
cross-focused, and more than that, it has a proper understanding of man, which
is very rare in Christian music.
Listen to how it begins:
“I was a child of wrath / An enemy of the King of Peace.”
When is the last time you heard something on Christian radio
that admitted that? When we are featured
in Christian music, it’s normally about how much we are giving to God, how we
are worshipping, how we are doing all these great things. Here we confess something critical to the
Gospel – that we are unworthy.
Wonderful. The
lyricist here understands that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for
us. In the words of the song, “The Son
of God still took my place.”
The image of the foreigner made a citizen, though only
briefly explored, it really great. But
it is all brought home in the bridge, where the singer confesses that he is the
one who killed Christ, and yet, and yet.
And yet.
Conclusion
This is great stuff, but for something to be art and
something to be really effective as art, it’s not simply that it is true. It’s got to be good too.
This song is true, and I’m glad for that. But it’s not good. And the problem is that something that isn’t
good cannot really make a big impact, which is exactly why Christian “art” is
usually so frustrating. It’s bad, so it’s
not going to get anywhere beyond a cliquish group of Christians who are fooling
themselves (or have been fooled by someone else) that they are holier because
they suffer through mediocre music just because it mentions Jesus.