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Apr. 4th, 2003 04:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pearwaldorfJohn Scalzi's written a thing on his music review site about Christian music. It helped clarify a few things in my head that I couldn't quite put my finger on before during my "Evanescence is Christian? WTF?" post.
It wasn't just a bred-agnostic-still-mostly-philosophically-pagan kneejerk reaction to the religion-as-institution and all its associated Christian Supply enterprises, but my experience with most Christian music being of the "God is great, God is good, you should join us and be one of the happy saved" variety. It also doesn't help that I am of the "art first, message second" camp. Any music that is intended to carry a message first and be a song second automatically makes me suspicious, if not incredibly annoyed. If a song can't stand alone without its message, I don't think there's any point in writing it.
And that's my biggest problem with most mainstream Christian music. It's just message with a pretty beat, as opposed to stuff somebody like Johnny Cash might do. Some of his work has distinctly religious overtones, but there's more to it. You understand how his faith relates to him and what it's done for him. And that makes all the difference.
(Unrelated: Am I the only person who is amused and a bit perplexed by Evanescence's metaphor of Christ as tourniquet? I mean, it's an interestingly ambiguous image to use. A tourniquet can be used to save your life in the most dire circumstances, but if you leave it on too long, it still destroys part of your body. An intriguingly nuanced metaphor for a band that works in a genre that's insanely straightforward.)
It wasn't just a bred-agnostic-still-mostly-philosophically-pagan kneejerk reaction to the religion-as-institution and all its associated Christian Supply enterprises, but my experience with most Christian music being of the "God is great, God is good, you should join us and be one of the happy saved" variety. It also doesn't help that I am of the "art first, message second" camp. Any music that is intended to carry a message first and be a song second automatically makes me suspicious, if not incredibly annoyed. If a song can't stand alone without its message, I don't think there's any point in writing it.
And that's my biggest problem with most mainstream Christian music. It's just message with a pretty beat, as opposed to stuff somebody like Johnny Cash might do. Some of his work has distinctly religious overtones, but there's more to it. You understand how his faith relates to him and what it's done for him. And that makes all the difference.
(Unrelated: Am I the only person who is amused and a bit perplexed by Evanescence's metaphor of Christ as tourniquet? I mean, it's an interestingly ambiguous image to use. A tourniquet can be used to save your life in the most dire circumstances, but if you leave it on too long, it still destroys part of your body. An intriguingly nuanced metaphor for a band that works in a genre that's insanely straightforward.)
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Date: 2003-04-07 10:17 am (UTC)And I hadn't noticed the tourniquet reference, but... wow, how cool. Amusing, because I have to question if they realise how perfectly double-edged that is.