Song Writing, Song Listening, and Song Discerning

Song Writing, Song Listening, and Song Discerning.

For the past few months my brain has been under construction in this area. What to listen to, what to write, and what makes a song good or bad. My entire life up to now I have listened to mainly Christian popular music (for example, Casting Crowns, Chris Tomlin, Third Day, ZoeGirl).

Recently, though, I have been examining the areas of song writing, song listening, and song discerning. This basically boils down to a few main points:

1. Song Writing: when I write songs, am I simply putting together words that sound good and rhyme or am I really meaning every single thing I say?
2. Song Listening: are the songs that I listen to theologically sound? As Keith Getty said “what we sing becomes the grammar of what we believe”. (Huyser-Honig, 2006) Are the songs that I listen to what I want my spiritual grammar to be?
3. Song Discerning: what makes a song good/bad? What are my standards in terms of acceptable words/messages in songs? Should I only listen to Christian music or clean secular music too? What is the difference in Christian music between praise/worship songs and life lesson songs?

So, here goes my attempt to pour my thoughts out onto paper (or in this case, my laptop keyboard). I’ll begin with Song Writing.

Song Writing

I think that God has given be the ability to write lyrics and music. My belief is that God has given me this gift to be used to His glory, because in 1 Corinthians 10:31 it says “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God”.

But with this gift comes hindrances. It’s very easy for me to pen a song, and given a paper and an idea, I can put down words to the entire song in 15 minutes. Rhyming and rhythm come easily to me. And there’s where the problem lies.

The ease of penning a song makes it easy to add in a line with the thought “It rhymes, it’s the right number of syllables, and it has a good Christian message” and overlook the fact that those things alone don’t give a line the right to be in a song. I always think of the song In Christ Alone by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend. Not one line of the song is “wasted” or undeserving of its position in the piece. Every line speaks boldly and when listening, you can tell that Getty wasn't missing a line of the verse and thought “this rhymes, has the right number of syllables, and it has a good Christian message.” No, you can tell that the songwriters knew what they were trying to say and said it in a concise, not a word wasted kind of way.

I think that when I write music, I need to write it the same way. So many times have I thrown in a line that was, in essence, “wasted”? That space in the song, that 10 seconds in the three minutes I have the listeners attention, was lost on something that may have rhymed and fit the rhythm, but wasn’t deeply and thoroughly thought out.

So I should be evaluating my every line of my every song and asking, “yes, it rhymes; yes, it fits the rhythm; yes, it has a nice Christian message; but does this line hit home the truth I’m trying to say with this song? Does this line alone have a meaning, a depth?” Because as a songwriter, I only have three to five minutes to hold my listeners ear and pour in the truth, and I don’t want to waste a line.

Song Listening

Ooh, here’s the one that’s been mainly on my mind - the issue of the lacking in most Contemporary Christian songs. For this section of thoughts I’d like to quote a bunch of articles I found online because they have put the words together in a great way to concisely say my thoughts.

“What we sing becomes the grammar of what we believe.” ~Keith Getty (Huyser-Honig, 2006)

Wow. I absolutely love this quote. This kinda sums up my thoughts about song listening. Some Contemporary Christian/worship songs are what I call “feel good” Christian songs for lack of a better name. They emphasize how wonderful we feel in God’s presence, how happy, peaceful, joyful we are, how we feel. They miss the point that I think should be in music: God. They focus too much on us. I think that if these are the songs we fill our minds with; this will be the grammar of what we believe. The reason we have a relationship with God is because He saved us, because of His great love, because He is our Hope. It’s not because we feel good when we’re with Him, but listening to a lot of songs like this can gradually slant our thoughts toward that purpose.

And here’s another Keith Getty quote about this: “I think it’s to the church’s poverty that the average worship song now has so few words, so little truth. [It] is so focused on several commercial aspects of God, like the fact that he loves our praises.” (Huyser-Honig, 2006)

Keith’s wife, Kristyn, makes another good point about modern worship music: “There is an unhelpful, casual sense that comes with some of the more contemporary music. It’s not how I would talk to God.” (Huyser-Honig, 2006)

Another point about this is “if the lyrics of a song can be equally applied to the crush of a 17-year-old girl as they can to Jesus, then we should seriously question it being used to point a group of believers’ collective hearts to God”. (Hurd, 2009) This goes with the whole “casual” sense in the music.

And I love this quote too: “Anyway, I began to wonder if part of the problem with modern worship music is that the deep things of God – faith in the unseen, hope in the re-creation of all things, the pervasive truth of the gospel, the mystery of God’s redemptive plan, the tension of already and not yet, etc. – don’t always rhyme.” (McClellan, 2010)

Song Discerning

This one is probably the longest, so I will attempt to summarize in a few points.

• What makes a song good or bad? In my opinion, the message, the theme, and the morals that the song promotes. I evaluate this by asking some questions like 

1. "If I had kids, would I want them listening to this?”
2. “Does this song line up with the Bible?”
3. “Does this song promote things that are pleasing to God?” – here it comes down to WWJD and What Would Jesus Listen To :)

• What are my standards in terms of acceptable words/messages in songs? I’m pretty strict about this. Because of the huge number of songs available to listen to, I’m willing to enforce my “rules”. Definitely no bad words or messages about things like living while we’re young, breakups, certain love songs, etc. Bad words for me includes some words that have found their way into the average American vocabulary – that sucks, stupid, and others. 
• Should I only listen to Christian music or clean secular music too? I haven’t yet determined this. I think that clean secular music is fine, and I place it in a similar category as Christian music that has a positive message about your worth, or your purpose – basically any Christian music other than worship. However, I definitely see a value in listening to this kind of Christian music over secular music. 
• What is the difference in Christian music between praise/worship songs and life lesson songs? Sort of as I stated in the last point – I put “life lesson” songs like songs about encouragement, value, and belief in a similar category as clean secular music. I think this type of Christian music contains good songs, and has value in encouragement, teaching us about life and faith, and helping us in our Christian walk. 

These are some of my thoughts. In conclusion, there isn’t a conclusion. My mind is still spinning about this. I believe that our teenage and young adult years are the years where we are the most influenced and easily molded, and through thoughts about music I am learning more about myself, my worldview, and my beliefs.

Works Cited

Hurd, S. ". (2009, 04 02). The Pitfalls of Worship Music. Retrieved 09 09, 2013, from Relevant: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/worship/features/16513-the-pitfalls-of-worship-music

Huyser-Honig, J. (2006, 09 01). Keith Getty on Writing Hymns for the Church Universal. Retrieved 09 10, 2013, from Calvin Institute of Christian Worship: http://worship.calvin.edu/resources/resource-library/keith-getty-on-writing-hymns-for-the-church-universal/

McClellan, S. (2010, 09 28). Part of the Problem With Modern Worship Music. Retrieved 09 09, 2013, from Echohub: http://echohub.com/posts/communication/part-of-the-problem-with-modern-worship-music/