The Day When the (Christian) Music Died

What happened to the CCM "revolution"?

Stryper, one of the first Christian Metal bands with their hit “To Hell With The Devil”.

I was about 20 years old when DC Talk, the “Christian supergroup” (as it was called) were making waves into the “mainstream” upon the release of their Supernatural album. I recall watching the Supernatural Experience Tour (1999) with friends when one of the DC Talk members spoke about their recent signing with Virgin Records and said that if they were “crossing over” [to secular audiences] they were “taking the cross over” as well.

We cheered.

The Virgin signing was big news for me and my Christian friends who, through the 90s and 2000s, kept ourselves up to date with what was going on in Christian Contemporary Music (CCM), a niche music scene that at last seemed like it was coming of age and being viewed seriously by the cultural musical gatekeepers. Not that we cared for what they thought—the fact that we had our own bands and music that no one else ever heard of and, when we introduced people to these groups, were usually quite impressed with them (until they read the lyrics), was all part of our identity. We were more indie than indie, wearing band shirts that not even the underground knew about; knowing about record labels like Tooth & Nail, listening to MxPX before the larger pop-punk scene knew about them. That made us cool in my eyes!

We had dreams for our own music. We were in Christian bands. Or were we in bands full of members who “also happened” to be Christians? This was always the debate. At any rate, for me growing up in this time, CCM had, by the late 90s, come to embody my values as an alt-rocker who loved Jesus. DC Talk were filling out stadiums, essentially giving the sanctified finger to the larger music scene who were trying to ignore them because of their message but were slowly shown to be the hypocrites they were (“we don’t care about the message,” they would say, “we just care about the music…” but whenever it was Christian, the message suddenly did matter!).

During 1998/9, my friends and I hosted a show on a local radio station where we would play all the Christian music that the world hated, and conservative Christians also hated, and usually for the same reasons. (I was given a solid talking-to the one morning at the radio station for playing such “crazy, dark” music on our show.)

During the landmark signing of DC Talk to Virgin, a lot of other Christian bands were making waves of their own, and the Christian music scene moved from blatant copying “if-you-like-x-you-might-like-this-Christian-version-of-x” into true originality. While the hit song “Jesus Freak”, the famous DC Talk song / album before “Supernatural” thrust the group into stardom from what was arguably a “Smells Like Teen Spirit” rip-off (to be fair, everyone was doing radio-friendly grunge at the time, and I honestly think Jesus Freak was one of the best versions of these), the entire album still, to this day, is exceptionally original, as well as its follow-up. DC Talk were merging rock and rap together in a time when that was still fairly unexplored—essentially, at the forefront of a musical movement.

Here’s the video if you’ve not seen it before. It was directed by Simon Maxwell, who also worked on the music video for "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails.

On the other side of the Atlantic something new was also emerging. Delirious?—an up-and-coming British band—had a top 40 moment with their song “Deeper”, and both their first two albums King of Fools and follow-up Metamorphis were absolutely original Britpop masterpieces. (I’ll never forget being in Britain in 1997 visiting one of my best friends when Oasis released Be Here Now and Delirious? released King of Fools. It was such a fantastic cultural moment for me!). Later, Delirious?, along with Matt Redman, created a sort-of “British Invasion” (like the Beatles) of Christian worship music into America.

It was also that invasion that changed everything, which we will soon see.

Meanwhile in America, Audio Adrenaline were creating rock ‘n roll albums that were truly rivaling the greats, and the aforementioned Tooth ‘n Nail were releasing bands like MxPx, Blindside (later signed to Warner Music), P.O.D., and many other groups that later “broke” into the “mainstream”; and later Toby Mac launched Gotee Records who were bringing on bands like Relient K and other interesting acts. Newsboys, for all their cheesiness, were creating massive shows that pushed the edges of technology (and I still think their album Take Me To Your Leader is very original, and their peak) while Sixpence None the Richer found the elusive and coveted space between CCM and mainstream stardom with break-through records and their hit song “Kiss Me”, which for many people (Christian or not) is one of the songs that defines the early 2000s music radio era. Jars of Clay were one of the trailblazers of that approach, having their music featured in movies such as The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) and Hard Rain (1998). At the same time, Switchfoot were entering the mainstream with their brilliant and original songwriting—and we had known them from their beginning days. True purists we were!

Here’s Blindside!

And for good measure, just to show how on par “Christian grunge” was, here’s Grammatrain (live):

Overall, whether you know these bands or not (many who followed the alt / punk rock scene in the early 2000s will know these names), the point is that CCM was becoming its own animal and making remarkable inroads into influencing the larger music scene. Back home, in South Africa, it was no different. In fact, many (and I actually think most) of the South African bands at the time who were charting seemed to have some sort of church background. Tree63 was one such example. Hanging with the up-and-coming musicians of South Africa during that time was a wonderful experience—I made good friends and we had good times.

Here’s Tree63 doing the rooftop thing in Durban, S.A. (Check those Oakleys!)

But then what happened, and why does it matter?

This period seemed to be short lived. Somewhere between 2002 and 2005, perhaps, it all changed. A combination of factors seemed to have converged and come to the fore. The disastrous Telecommunications Act of 1996 came to full fruition, by now having destroyed a ton of independent radio in America due to “radio homogenization”. The MP3 “revolution” was in full swing—first the Napster ordeal dished out significant damage to the whole music industry, and then Apple capitalized with iTunes and the iPod. The entire music industry was in disarray, and CCM was inevitably suffering badly. Not to mention that by now a ton of independent record companies releasing CCM had also been sold in one way or another to larger, secular labels, who I don’t think fully understood the curious potential Christian music always had.

What the big labels understood was money, and that’s why it pivoted to ‘worship music’, which is much easier to market and sell—and above all, license, which is where the real money is made. That was potentially the unexpected result of the “British Worship Music Invasion”.

Today when you look at CCM it is arguably one of the most boring musical scenes in the whole market. Sure, it has a wonderful indie scene, but hardly anyone pays attention to it. This isn’t an old man longing for the heydays (at least, I hope it isn’t!). It seems an objective fact that CCM went backwards. It seemed to retreat. Today, generally it has very little production edginess and pushes hardly any boundaries, except in some spaces here and there.

What we do have today is the “worship industry”—a weird mix of sub-culture superstars who effectively “write to market”, sing and produce music to glorify Jesus but brand in an awkward way that can come across as “look at how amazing I am as I glorify Jesus”. It’s even weirder that it’s called a “worship industry” with a straight face.

I don’t want to move this article into a cynical direction but rather make a point that when it seemed that Christian art was actually influencing culture due to its originality and unapologetic nature, it suddenly all changed.

An opportunity lost?

I think you can almost see the shift if you look at what CCM Magazine, a leading publication for the scene at the time, was printing from about 2002. Originally CCM was primarily about evangelism: getting into the world and into culture and bringing Jesus into these spaces. Lyrics and music that appealed to the culture was adopted as a sort-of evangelistic technique. Some of it was really bad, of course, and we can be quite cynical and snobbish about whether music should be preachy (although no one seemed to mind John Lennon doing it) but the point is that it was predominantly outward focused with a drive to make it creative and interesting.

CCM Magazine up to 2002 would often talk about how this raises so many interesting and difficult questions, because it meant Christian musicians would play in clubs or bars or festivals, open for secular acts, dress like rock stars, or write music to appeal to radio—with some crazy ones even using cuss words. But now the whole scene was, in retrospect, retreating to the safe ground and turning inward. It became all about church music. It was all about reforming the church’s ‘sound’ to reflect something more contemporary and accessible. The timing was perfect from a marketing perspective, because the music industry on the whole was in disarray, and this is how Christian music could survive. With the CCLI licensing machine (churches pay CCLI to play contemporary worship music), it was actually a perfect set up.

But very quickly, this all sanitized and tamed Christian music to the point where today there is very little on offer that can make a serious impact into culture. And most Christian musicians don’t even want to: it’s more lucrative and far more safe to write a “hit” worship song. Who wants the scrutiny that comes with being in the gray area, playing “Christian music’ (however that may actually be defined) to non-Christians or to Christians who don’t get it and are constantly scrutinizing what you’re doing, and therefore loved by almost no one? If you write a song millions of churches sing all over the world and have to pay a small fee every time they do, that’s far more lucrative—and you get to be a hero!

The problem is so much of Christian music is like salt that has lost its saltiness. And Christian radio stations keep perpetuating this problem; big concerts of ‘worship’ continue to make a lot of money and draw the masses; churches continue to promote the “worship artists”, while the world in general doesn’t care. It all feels so… pointless, in a way. We can say it’s really all about Jesus, but when a big “worship act” swings into town charging $200 a ticket I’m not so sure.

I think, however, the time is ripe or a change to happen.

The new cultural shift

There is something happening under the surface with Western culture right now, and it’s accelerating. For one, you might have noticed a fair amount of coverage coming out showing how young people (Gen Z) are going back to church, especially young men. Interestingly, however, it appears that a large number of these are not choosing to join churches that sing the boyfriend-girlfriend worship songs, but they’re choosing more traditional settings.

But there’s more. As I’ve been writing here on Just One Beautiful Thing, there is an increasing, and accelerated, rejection of social media, phones, and living a heavily saturated digital life. There is an underground resurgence of going to see live music, and an excitement around being part of music scenes again. There is even a resurgence of not only vinyl, but believe it or not, cassette tapes. Apparently, the music industry is enjoying such a resurgence that it was even more profitable than the movie industry last year. It seems that what the artists have been hoping for is happening: people are rejecting A.I. and swinging hard in the human direction.

Time will still tell if all this is the right way to interpret things. I think it’s at least close.

But I think Christian music can offer culture something important. Something that it needs.

Hope.

Music filled with hope about a better future that’s coming.

This is what Christian music, at its best, was always about. This is what the Christian message is full of.

Politics is the great distraction. It has its place, but it’s not everything. Art, however, can draw us away from politics to something bigger. While there seems to be a place for ‘protest art’, I must admit I don’t think it’s always the best use of art. The better art calls to something deeper that speaks to the human longing: hope.

Just like this Star Trek fan film that I’ve posted before:

This is what artists are called to do. Through art and music and writing and dance and filmmaking and video game development, and whatever else, artists are called to inspire society with vision.

As for Christian music, I think it’s time that it doesn’t just focus inward but outward. Because our cultures need vision right now—one that goes beyond the politics of the day but gives us vision for a brighter, better, human future.

After all, Jesus was also a man—God entering time as a man—and He came to show that the future is human.