"worship" is not a genre

wor·ship

  [wur-ship]  Show IPA noun, verb,wor·shiped, wor·ship·ing or ( especially British  ) wor·shipped,wor·ship·ping.

noun

1.

reverent honor and homage paid to God or a sacredpersonage, or to any object regarded as sacred.

(from dictionary.com)

i talk to a lot of people about music. like, seriously, almost everybody i come in contact with, i talk about music. and this i have found: pretty much nobody likes country. there’s like, one person i know who even listens to the stuff. (why, i am not sure.*) and secondly, in the “Christian” market, a lot of people will tell me: “oh, i like all kinds of music. except country. and worship music! 

i really hate most worship music.

what did you just say?

i really hate most worship music.

uhhh… define worship music.

oh, you know, that stuff that like, chris tomlin and hillsong united play.

uh-huh. so what bands do you like?

oh, i really like house of heroes, and family force 5, and maybe some mike mains and the branches, sometimes.

cool. you know that one song by house of heroes, “touch this light?”

yeah

it’s a worship song.

what the- no it’s not!

yes. actually, it pretty much is. and you know d-i-e-4-y-o-u?

yeah?

that’s pretty much a worship song, too.

you’re insane

and of course, “miracle” is one too…

you’re an idiot.

at this point in the conversation , the other person has a tendency to walk away and associate with someone who’s a little more of a hipster Christian that i am. and hipster Christianity is fine if you don’t feel like going very deep. however i am about to touch on something that the hipster scene really can’t. lyrics.

you see, lyrics are everything in a song. if the music is great, but the lyrics are simply a bunch of angry, disparaging gibberish, the song stinks and only angry disparaging people like it. and if the music is annoying and atonal, but the lyrics are fairly good, only radiohead fans like it.** 

the point is, the genre of worship music simply does not exist. there are worship songs, but they come from all different types of music. i think the doxology, played in drop c tuning with a triple kick and more angry screaming and yelling than an episode of dr. phil* is still a worship song. now, granted, it is unpleasant to listen to, and makes one rather nauseous*, but it is still a worship song.

i think the general Christian market needs to rethink what we call worship music. so instead of those typical 1-4-5-3 acoustic guitars and a djembe*****, playing a newsboys song, our thoughts of worship music should extend to all different styles of music.

*zing!

**zing 2.0!

*** zing 3! on a roll!

**** though, michael w. smith’s early records (and some of the later ones) have a similar effect 

*****i promise that this is the last zing.