Deep. Popular. Christian.
In the music industry, you can have two out of three. But you can't claim them all.
There's no shortage of popular Christian contemporary music (CCM) on the airwaves today which is a mile long and an inch deep. I take one for the family team and sometimes turn on the radio to our local K-Love station when my kids are in the car with me. I can only usually last ten minutes with it or so, though, before I start rolling my eyes and groaning. I don't know what is worse for my kids--being scandalized by bad messaging on the secular airwaves or bad (ie, shallow/cookie-cutter) music on the Christian station.
There's also the occasional deep-and-Christian song that surfaces every now and then in unlikely places. I'm thinking Ben Harper's I Shall Not Walk Alone or Three Days Grace's Never Too Late. But these songs are more underground than typically chart-toppers, and are few and far between.
Then there's the deep/introspective and popular songs that rise up in the secular music industry across genres. Luke Comb's cover of Tracy Chapman's 1988 Fast Car is one that has been getting a lot of air play, and there are a lot of layers to the lyrics themselves (I appreciated this analysis of Comb's latest hit in Crisis, here). These are non-formulaic songs that hit you in the feels while also making you think, massage nostalgia, or deliver a subtle note of inspiration when you weren't paying attention.
I came across a song on the radio recently, however, that does seem to have the rare privilege of claiming all three qualifiers--deep, popular, and Christian--and that is Daylight by 23 year old singer-songwriter David Kushner. The song hit number 33 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and has been getting a lot of airplay lately on the (secular) radio.
.jpeg)
It doesn't follow the usual pop-music formula, and to boot it's a deep, earthy, throaty ballad to the mystery of concupiscence and our fallen human nature, while offering the hope of redemption at the end of the dark tunnel of sin. The lyrics could have been pulled from Paul's epistle to the Romans in a contemporary context:
"Telling myself I won't go there
Oh, but I know that I won't care
Tryna wash away all the blood I've spilt
This lust is a burden that we both share
Two sinners can't atone from a lone prayer
Souls tied, intertwined by our pride and guilt
There's darkness in the distance
From the way that I've been livin'
But I know I can't resist it
Oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time
You and I drink the poison from the same vine
Oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time
Hidin' all of our sins from the daylight
From the daylight, runnin' from the daylight
From the daylight, runnin' from the daylight
Oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time
Tellin' myself it's the last time
Can you spare any mercy that you might find
If I'm down on my knees again?
Deep down, way down, Lord, I try
Try to follow your light, but it's night time
Please, don't leave me in the end
There's darkness in the distance
I'm beggin' for forgiveness (ooh)
But I know I might resist it, oh
Oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time
You and I drink the poison from the same vine
Oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time
Hidin' all of our sins from the daylight
From the daylight, runnin' from the daylight
From the daylight, runnin' from the daylight
Oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time
Oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time
You and I drink the poison from the same vine
Oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time
Hidin' all of our sins from the daylight
From the daylight, runnin' from the daylight
From the daylight, runnin' from the daylight
Oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time"
Now, it could be riding on the coattails of Hozier's 2013 release Take Me To Church, since the lyrical style is mimicked in Daylight. But Take Me To Church, while uniquely styled and catchy, is an ode to homosexual love and an admitted condemnation of organized religion that stands against it (specifically the Catholic Church, as Hozier has said in interviews). Kushner admitted as well that Hozier was one of his musical influences, and their deep bass voices sound similar; but nothing in Daylight resembles the targeted anti-church preaching in Take Me To Church. Though Kushner is young, his way of integrating Christian-themed messaging that emanates from the miry pit of suffering without being overt or kitschy reminds me of the ethos of Flannery O'Connor, albeit in the musical world.
What I liked about Daylight when I first heard it is that it was all over secular radio--but strangely absent from Christian radio (at least on our local affiliate). Whether this was a serendipitous infiltration or happenstance, or if it was because the themes were general and human enough to get through security, I don't know. But we need more music, art, and writing that doesn't sequester itself to the "Christian music/art/novel" ghetto, but goes forth into the messy and antagonistic culture to make its mark. In the culture dying for lack of fresh air and meat that hasn't turned rancid, here it can stir sinners steeped in sin to repentance, the hopeless downtrodden to hope, and the lazy agnostic to consider the meat of existence that lives hidden behind the veil.
There's nothing wrong per-se with Christian Praise and Worship and pop music. It's fun. It's catchy. It's "positive, encouraging." But to the extent all you eat is cereal or Kraft macaroni and cheese, you don't have a balanced diet. Sometimes you need some roughage, fiber, red meat. We need the Flannery O'Connors and the Graham Greenes and the Evyln Waughs and the Shusaku Endos to round us out and push us to get out of our pat religious boxes.
As long as music, art, and writing pegs and markets itself as "Christian music," "Christian art" or "Christian writing," it doesn't have the circumspection necessary to deftly spread its seed in a hostile culture, but instead chooses to play paddy cake in the sandbox with its fellow cadre of believers. I commend the young songwriter Kushner for attempting to duck under the barbed wire of the secular Music Industrial Complex with Daylight; may it bring souls to question the husks they are eating with the pigs, and pull out a chair for them at the banquet feast of the Bridegroom.
Related:
No comments:
Post a Comment