I Don't Like Christian Music?

There’s a rumor I don’t like Christian music. Ehhhhhhhhhh. Wrong answer but thanks for playing.

If you’ve read my blog for any period of time you have heard me mention some of my favorite and most respected bands of all styles and genres—including those that wear the label “Christian.”

I know where the false idea came from though. I have a love-hate relationship with the Christian subculture.

Part of it heavily influenced me and I owe it a debt of gratitude. Take the music for example::: I don’t know that I would be the person I am today without the music of some Christian musicians. But then again, the ones who have really influenced me sing about spirituality in a way that any legitimate songwriter would chronicle their thoughts and struggles—in other words, I never really get the impression from them that they are on the Jesus Train headed to their gig at Six Flags Over Jesus as they snub their nose at anything outside the subculture.

Yes, I have been very opinionated about some Christian music. Some of it is dumb. Some of it has no musical integrity. Some of the lyrics make me gag. Some would bite the dust if it weren’t for very clever marketing to grandmothers and soccer moms who are afraid to buy their kids any music at all unless the Jesus quotient is high. Some of it isn’t honest—it’s nampy-pamby-Jesus-is-my-boyfriend music. Some of it makes me angry. When a band jumps on the bandwagon of style and starts acting and singing and dressing like some other band that all the cool kids listen to, I think that is dumb.

But, you know, I have the same kind of problems with music of ANY genre.

There are a lot of great things happening in Christian music today and I know a lot of great people who are creating art that naturally flows from a full life. They are in a different category and that is not my soapbox.

It’s not the legitimate expression of faith in art I have a problem with at all.

I have a huge disdain for anything that seems like a secondhand cheap knockoff of something that was working well as it was but someone had to ‘Christianize” and sanitize it, and market it as a better idea because of its Jesus-speak.

More to come.