What's wrong with Christian music?

....I've always thought Christian music should sound like this:


But unfortunately for me, so much of it doesn't. ............................How sad is that?!!!!!

I am not a fan of CCM other than Third Day and Petra. That's it. My Spotify playlists run towards "classic rock" (I remember when it was new rock). I like mellow stuff, the Eagles, Styx, REO Speedwagon, The Monkees, Jimmy Buffett. It's nearly impossible to be angry and listen to that music. Truth is, I really only listen to music when I'm driving. My church strikes a balance between hymns and more contemporary music. We don't have the "rock concert" thing happening at the beginning of service. We have 2, maybe 3 songs, and one at the end of service.
Most CCM sounds like wanna be good rock. I find the quality, the mix, to be substandard, the lyrics are often banal and repetitive, and sound sort of "Jesus is my boyfriend" stuff. YUK!!!

Enilorac said:

...Most CCM sounds like wanna be good rock. I find the quality, the mix, to be substandard, the lyrics are often banal and repetitive, and sound sort of "Jesus is my boyfriend" stuff. YUK!!!

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Which makes me think of this:

There is the intention of the music and there is the use of it. A person can use contemporary music to stimulate himself to feelings of religiosity. However, a person can use traditional music to give them feelings of sentiment as well as religiosity.

It might be difficult to discern the person who opens his heart to God when he recalls or read the words of a song and receives pleasant feelings as a result from the person who takes from the music only that which stimulates himself.

In addition to how music is used is the intention of the person that crafted the song. Wesley was supposed to have taken popular drinking songs and put Christian lyrics to them so that people would be directed more towards the Lord.

Music gives a direct connection to the heart. It provides a bridge. However, a bridge can carry people in two directions. Those who take it in and use it to stimulate themselves may misuse it. Those who see in it an opportunity to express love, gratitude, and praise may make good use of it.

Modern songs sometimes called 7-11 songs (the same seven words repeated eleven times) can tend towards casting a spell over a group (much like Buddhists chanting) so that an almost hypnotic trance is induced with a sort of group swaying that seems less like honoring the lord than about experiencing an ecstatic state.

When we spent several years in a small rural congregation in Maryland. We were the only black family in a small congregation of white retired farmers whose music was country gospel. I'm still not a big fan of country gospel, but I did learn that the Holy Spirit's appreciation of music was far more catholic than mine.

I checked my Pandora statistics and saw that I have given "thumbs up" to only about 20% of the songs they've presented to me and "thumbs down" to the rest (I make a point of making a judgment on every song). The ones I like, I really do like. But that's only about 1/5th of them. Does that mean I do or that I don't like CCM?

John Wesley wrote over 6,500 hymns (which were all CCM in his time), of which maybe 100 are still published and most people probably don't know more than a dozen. So John Wesley's average is a lot worse than Pandora's, as far as I'm concerned. But John Wesley's minority of "hits" are certainly wonderful.

I think everyone is expecting too much from Christian musical artists. The modern music business demands about a song a month from an artist for their entire careers. That's really pretty absurd. At that rate, most of them are forgettable in any genre for every artist. It's especially absurd for Christians. If a Christian artist produced ten good Spirit-filled songs in an entire career, that would be an outstanding achievement, IMO.

BibleBeliever1611 said:

You shouldn't listen to that kind of music; it comes from the devil. Just because it sounds nice doesn't make it good.

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That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing.

BibleBeliever1611 said:

Why does most of Christian music sound so horrible?

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For years they've tried to 'attract' with secular sounding music...

BibleBeliever1611 said:

Why does most of Christian music sound so horrible? Most of the so called 'Christian music' that you find is some guy singing with effeminate voice. It's the worst music I've ever heard. And those types songs like Hillsong get millions or even hundreds of millions of views on Youtube. In fact some of it is so bad that I believe the devil is behind it.

This is what real Christian music should be like:

Or this:

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Every person likes a different type of music. Some like soft voice, some like deep baritone voices, just because you do not like it does not make it bad. If millions like it and you dont that your problem

seeking.IAM said:

I have a friend who leads a Christian gospel choral group. He calls CCM "711" music - for seven words repeated 11 times.

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BibleBeliever1611 said:

Why does most of Christian music sound so horrible? Most of the so called 'Christian music' that you find is some guy singing with effeminate voice. It's the worst music I've ever heard. And those types songs like Hillsong get millions or even hundreds of millions of views on Youtube. In fact some of it is so bad that I believe the devil is behind it.

This is what real Christian music should be like:

Or this:

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@BibleBeliever1611 honestly man I agree most Christian music these days is actual garb. I stick with the old hymns if I have to sing and a lot of the artists especially mainstream and that sound really pop-like have the influence of the evil one behind them because those artists end up working with producers that are not genuine believers and truly have something sinister about their agenda in what they would call "christian music". That's why I stopped listening to it. A good example of someone who seemed to sell out are Phill Wickham and Jeremy Camp. If you must see the change in style and music strictly for educational purposes and not to continue listening I recommend praying before you listen and then listening to a song from them from the early 2000's and then listening to a very recent song. You will see what I mean.