What are we defining as "Christian music"? Are we talking about the entirety of sacred song produced by the Christian Church over the last two thousand years, which includes everything from the ancient Phos Hilaron to Gregorian Chant (Plainsong) to the works of Bach? Or are we focusing more on the Contemporary Christian Music scene? Or the "Praise and Worship" genre? Or all the above?
My relationship with "Christian music" has changed over the years.
My parents were really into CCM, my mom listened to a lot of Twila Paris, Amy Grant, and Ray Boltz; my dad listened to a lot of Wayne Watson (as well as Ray Boltz). My parents started to get me into music fairly young, my favorite artist between about the age of 7 and 13 was Carman. I also got a little bit into Geoff Moore, Michael W. Smith, and Audio Adrenaline in my early adolescence.
The school I attended was a very conservative Fundamentalist Baptist school, and all the music I listed above was broadly classified as "Christian Rock" and was therefore regarded as evil, satanic music. So I tended to feel a bit like an outcast and a rebel at my school because my teachers and most of the other students were so adamantly against such things. It was one of several reasons I felt generally ostracized there.
So I grew up in such a way that "Christian Rock" was a way of rebelling against what I considered a harsh, repressive, and generally unwelcoming environment. As such I associated hymns with that environment. As such I hated hymns and "old fogey music" because it represented in my mind a deeply legalistic, authoritarian, oppressive culture. A sentiment that I held onto deeply well into high school, years after I stopped attending that school.
In high school my tastes started to shift toward Christian punk, Christian ska, and occasionally Christian metal. My favorite bands were the OC Supertones, Five Iron Frenzy, Plankeye, Dogwood, One21, and Zao. I also got really into the Praise & Worship genre, in particular the band Delirious? whose songs pretty much took the Evangelical worship scene by storm; there was also Chris Tomlin and others.
Again, I considered "old fogey music" to be the symptom of legalistic, oppressive, cold, dead churches that wanted to control their members. The stuff I listened to was "freeing" and proof in my mind that I could be a Christian without being relegated as some stuffy shirt something-or-other.
It wasn't until my 20s, that I began to look deeper into the roots of Christianity, questioned a lot of my Evangelical and Pentecostal preconceptions about Christianity, and came into contract with the wider Christian world, (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) and the traditional music of that Christian world that I began to gain a deeper appreciation for the historical music of the Christian Church. The great chants and hymns of both the Eastern and Western traditions. Simultaneously I started to find much of the "Christian music" that I had been listening to much of my life to feel more hollow, cheaper by comparison.
And that trend has basically continued with that momentum with me. I don't really listen to much of what is typically classified as "Christian music" these days. And I find myself fairly critical of what ought to be sung in church and what would be rather inappropriate--not on the basis of musical "style" but rather theological content.
So, I mean yes I do still listen to "Christian music", it's just that the "Christian music" I listen to these days sounds like this:
Of the Father's Love Begotten - traditional a capella chior - YouTube
Hail Gladdening Light, ??? ?????? (Phos Hilaron ) - YouTube
Stay With Us - Hymn Adore Te - YouTube
-CryptoLutheran