Recently I have been pondering my history of listening to Christian or “church” music. I grew up listening to hymns in the Catholic Church and then moved more towards contemporary worship as I got older. In between those extremes, I’ve enjoyed some amazing religious music that doesn’t get played in church at all. The albums (remember when we used to call them that?) “Hymns by Johnny Cash” , “The Half Ain’t Never Been Told Vol1&2″ are just some examples of great Christian music. The album “Saved” by Bob Dylan, the various bluegrass gospel renderings of Bill Monroe, the blues songs of Blind Willie Johnson, not to mention a large portion of J.S. Bach’s music are more examples of this.
To me, a great Christian song (excluding an instrumental) has a strong, biblical lyric as well as melody. I tried to articulate my feelings on this subject but found an excellent post by Dan Cogan did a much better than I could. So I scrapped my writeup and decided to point you to that [button style=”btn-primary” url=”http://www.dancogan.com/my-journey-away-from-contemporary-worship-music” size=”” block=”false” target=”_self”] post [/button]
I have two favorite Christian themed songs. The first is “Every Grain of Sand” by Bob Dylan and “Amazing Grace” (words by John Newton). Both songs have stood the test of time and have fantastic lyrics. On top of that, the melodies are pretty. I suggest you check out those songs if you have not had a chance. One of the “spookiest” worship songs I’ve ever heard is “Dark Was the Night” by Blind Willie Johnson. It does with instruments and humming a great job of helping me picture Jesus on the cross.
Feel free to post your favorite songs below.
