What do I love? I love when Eric, Mike and I get into a good debate. There’s some good debating going on and I also love when one of us (myself included) throw out ludricrous statements to see if someone will challenge us on them.
Last night, we got onto the topic of the rock genre in general and how one defines rock. While that isn’t part of this entry, it spearheaded talk of how Mike had been listening to Allan Cross’s Ongoing History of New Music radio program and they had a segment about Christian Rock. They mentioned how U2 was affiliated with Christian rock and even bands like Evanescence were even signed to some Christian Rock distributor for their first release.
I found this intriguing. I couldn’t understand how bands like this were labelled Christian rock but at the same time, I realized that I had a very narrow definition of what Christian Rock entails. I assumed that the majority of your lyrics have blatant Christian themes and you’re not shy to play a church or two (and no Mike, playing in a church for the sake of playing in a church because it’s an awesome acoustic venue doesn’t count!).
But after doing some research, it looked like Christian rock deals with any music relating to Christian themes…faith, higher power, all that jazz.
What the heck? A LOT of bands must have Christian rock in them somewhere.
But the real kicker is when Eric pointed out that Christian rock is the only ‘lyrically subject’ theme that appears as a genre. He hit the nail on the head with that comment.
Think about it…we can’t think of one other genre that deals with a subject matter. Old country music and blues songs may have a general mood that they wish the music and lyrics wish to convey, but a mood is a vast repertoire to create stories about. My dog died, there’s a tear in my beer, someone stole my last potato chip…all these lyrics deal with the mood they are trying to convey.
I can understand if Christian rock should be reclassified as ‘uplifting rock’ or ‘gospel music’. That would make much more sense. But to base an entire genre on one subject? It doesn’t make much sense at all. I ask anyone out there to bring me examples of ‘subject’ based music genres. We really want to know if we are missing the boat on this one. I want to be on the boat. Ah, Lonely Island, your album is too funny. SAXMAN!
iplaying: The Wolves (Act I and II) – Bon Iver (For Emma, Forever Ago)