Cliches happen.
And I’ll be the first to confess that, as hard as I try to avoid using them, I’ve written and spoken them on numerous occasions. Sometimes by accident. Once in a while on purpose.
With that said, I still try to avoid using cliches, especially the Christian kind of cliches…
On Saturday, I was scanning my radio and the dial fell on one of the local Christian radio stations here in Nashville. The announcer said, “In at number 13 is the band Kutless with ‘What Faith Can Do’.”
Rather than pushing the “scan” button again, I stopped to listen. And behold, what I heard was the largest cluster of Christiany cliches known to man–like a Joel Osteen sermon set to music.
Listen for yourself.
Here are the lyrics… Can you count the cliches?
Gotta find the strength to rise
From the ashes and make a new beginning
Anyone can feel the ache
You think it’s more than you can take
But you are stronger, stronger than you know
Don’t you give up now
The sun will soon be shining
You gotta face the clouds
To find the silver lining
I’ve seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn’t ever end
Even when the sky is falling
And I’ve seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That’s what faith can do
It doesn’t matter what you’ve heard
Impossible is not a word
It’s just a reason for someone not to try
Everybody’s scared to death
When they decide to take that step
Out on the water
It’ll be alright
Life is so much more
Than what your eyes are seeing
You will find your way
If you keep believing
I’ve seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn’t ever end
Even when the sky is falling
And I’ve seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That’s what faith can do
Overcome the odds
You don’t have a chance
(That’s what faith can do)
When the world says you can’t
It’ll tell you that you can!
I’ve seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn’t ever end
Even when the sky is falling
And I’ve seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That’s what faith can do
That’s what faith can do!
Even if you fall sometimes
You will have the strength to rise
I realize that, in certain instances, cliches are used purposefully, and that it’s impossible to avoid them entirely.
But to me, the above song represents a lack of creativity, and not just in the lyrics, but also in melody and delivery…
Which probably means it will be a smash hit.
So… how many cliches do you count in “What Faith Can Do”?
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wow…what a sad, but true post. I am amazed at what gets pushed to the public and what doesn’t.
Are we sure that’s a Kutless song and not a Casting Crowns song? I bet it will win a dove award!
On its way to #1 I’d imagine.
Christian music is awful. Just awful.
If you talk to people who are in the Christian music but will speak frankly about it, they’ll tell you its more of a money machine than the secular music industry. To me, this song exemplifies what makes the bile bubble up in my throat when I think about most christian contemporary music. It’s formulaic, cliche driven, and plays off people’s easily tugged heart strings while they drive down the road in their minivan with 5 kids to soccer practice.
I really think that the type of music that is popular speaks to the current condition of most christians attitudes. If people want easily digested cliches, it seems to me that their faith doesn’t go too deep either. What we ingest is usually indicative of what we desire.
Great post. As a musician this subject is a really really sore one.
The first cliche is the musical intro to the song. Nothing fresh in this song. I’ve played with them at a couple festivals when I was touring and the stuff they would say between the songs was cliche too – so whenever you finish counting the cliches in the song – there’s more.
Most Christians don’t understand why I feel the way I do about Christian music, and it’s impossible to explain that to them without sounding like a stuck up snob. I have creative convictions, and the Christian industry usually doesn’t even attempt to meet them.
I really want to agree with LesC1aypool’s comment above about what people ingest may be indicitave of the depth of their faith, I have to disagree, but only to extent. There are so many people that I know and love, people that put my faith to shame, that love Christian music. Even the cheesy, syrupy worship stuff that makes my bones cringe. Again, I do agree to an extent, but your statement was kind of a blanket statement, and maybe not a fair one. I think some Christians have no idea what “good” music is, and they eat what is fed to them, having no idea that there is much better stuff available to them, and no desire to go find it.
It kind of sounds like The Climb by Miley Cyrus. Sadly, the Climb is a way better song.
Agreed. When I first listened to their first album I thought they might be what Christian music needed. I became a fan and have seen them several times in concert. However, they have long since become factory workers on the Christian hit assembly line. It’s been a long time since they demonstrated the creativity and originality that drew me to them.
Paul – thank you for what you do. I know you ruffle feathers. Sometimes I feel like you ruffle featers that don’t need ruffling, but most often you reflect what seems to be a healthy repugnance for the way Christian “culture” reflects a wimpy Jesus and a wimpy faith. I love your blog. Keep it up.
I find myself with some conflicting feelings over this post. I don’t want to spend my energy ripping a group who is spending their life in ministry… but come on. Their art is in the public forum. And it’s not good art. We can say that out loud. I really identify with Clay above. Can’t listen to the local Christian pop station for more than 30 seconds without getting irritated, but it’s really hard to explain that to Christians (like my wife and 5 boys) without coming across as snobby. I think there are solid God-fearing Christ followers all over who just don’t think much about the art they surround their life with. I think it MAY reflect more on their lack of taste in art than it does on the depth of their faith.
Maybe because I’m a musician and Worship Pastor I’ve got a hightened sense of the dangerour effects of bad art and cliched faith.
But then came the moment of brilliance from LesC1aypool above: “What we ingest is usually indicative of what we desire.”
*pausing a moment* Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Spending the rest of my life teaching people to desire DEEP. Thanks for the thought provoking post.
And we saved the GMA for this?
Joshua, I am on staff part time as a music assistant at my church. My real job is playing in a band, which offers me creative freedom, but while I’m home I work at church to supplement the wallet. Essentially I am a worship leader who hates most worship music. It seems to me from your post you feel the same way. Is there an answer for people like us?
I think I nodded off during that one! Great post & thought provoking discussion in this here comment forum.
As someone living on the other side of leading worship, cheesy church music, and cheesy church signs, even on the other side of Christian books that have about as much spiritual value as Vogue magazine.
I think it’s important to remember that just because one person finds Christian music revolting doesn’t mean that they are therefore spiritually superior and have a deeper understanding of God because they can connect with him through “real” music.
That would be like me saying that because I find the writings of Thomas Merton, Richard Foster, St. Augustine, and Mother Teresa the epitome of life, where I can connect and see the depth of God’s heart through their words. That those who find them dry and longwinded are therefore spiritually immature and have no clue.
Can you hear the pride oozing out of some of these statements? I’m just sayin.
We are treading a very fine line.
The problem has been identified over and over again in the comments: factory, lack of honesty, etc. etc.
how do we fix it? I grew up listening to CCM, but now I can’t honestly say that I had a desire to buy a CCM album in years.
I could care less about what’s going on in the “industry”.
I don’t know if it’s a cliche song or not, but I like that song by Mandisa… “God is There” or something.
This is drivel. Blah, blah, blah, boring.
You kinda gotta smile at the Emo hair, though.
The Lord has been laying it on my heart to say that I was just so blessed to read what you shared in this post!
Ahem. Anyway. What annoys me (as a musician) is not so much that people produce and consume inferior “art”. It’s that this kind of art is being held up in our churches as what we should aspire to. It’s like going to film school and being instructed to imitate Manos, the Hands of Fate… because it won a Golden Globe.
I think it’s not so much that people “desire” to ingest this stuff, though LesC1aypool does have a fine point: demand = supply. But nobody goes to the store and says, “I’m in the mood for some banal cliches set to repetitive tunes; what have you got?” They say, “I want a Christian album of worship songs that glorify God in a fresh and creative way.” And we give them this, and they never learn any different. There’s the insult.
As a Christian, I know that God can use anything He pleases to glorify Himself. Sometimes I just wish He didn’t have to.
Clay– Having been in the same position, I’d say you have two options: 1) Try to appreciate the Holy Spirit’s working more than the music, and/or 2) Find sneaky ways to make subtle improvements. (For instance, whenever I’m given a chart that retrogresses from V to IV, I silently replace the IV with a ii m7. Pardon the shop talk.)
If Miley Cyrus’s “It’s the Climb” and what’s-her-name’s “Jesus Take the Wheel” can be so well-loved, then apparently people love cliches.
I suppose that’s what makes them cliche, eh?
This is a super interesting post/discussion. Having been essentially indoctrinated into the Christian Music industry during my high school years (seriously, I listened to NOTHING secular), I am appalled now to look back and see what I handed to some of my friends claiming it was “good.”
And I think the problem is really what Eric identifies – we’re fed it and told it’s good, so we don’t really know any better. I certainly didn’t until I started questioning why I liked the things I did. I came to realize that I was listening to things I didn’t even enjoy simply because of the “Christian” label they came with – Kutless, actually, being one of those. Once I started actually listening to lyrics, determining what music truly reflected my tastes, and what sort of experience I was going for when I was listening to music, my tastes branched out a ton, and now music (both secular and some that could be termed “Christian”) is a method by which I connect with God, and I’m able to do so on a deeper level because I changed what I decided was good.
There’s also a major issue with the use of the word “Christian” as an adjective, but that might be another debate for another day.
All this song needs is to be played as the theme song to a Nicholas Sparks movie.
thanks, matthew. 🙂 i needed that today 🙂
I agree, the song is full of clichés and I (a music lover) would not describe it as great art. However…
I’ll never understand the tendency to condemn all Christian music because some songs don’t measure up to certain standards. Are you telling me you can’t turn on any mainstream station and find songs littered with clichés? Pop music being bad art isn’t a Christian music problem, it’s a universal reality. The union of great art and popular art is more the exception than the rule.
Christian music has an added challenge: to marry art with a message. Great art is often ambiguous and leaves room for interpretation. It has to subtly elicit an emotional response without tripping our propaganda sensors.
For many Christian musicians and Christian music fans, though, the message will always trump the art. They want it to be clear and unambiguous. That’s a value call, and sometimes it’s the right call. For example, if 95% of the people in a church service aren’t sure what the song they’re singing is about, is it really corporate worship? Or is it a group of people enjoying good music? (I do believe there are times for that too, by the way, in the right time and place.)
I appreciate the call for Christian music to be better. We should push each other to be the most creative people on the planet. (“Create” is the first verb in the Bible for crying out loud.)
LesC1aypool, I would love to know who you’re talking to in the Christian music industry. I’m also in the business, and everywhere I look around me I see people earning much less money than they should, and making countless sacrifices while pouring their entire lives into their ministry.
I know a successful, well-known Christian band working their tails off, missing their families while out of the road for weeks and months at a time, and each member draws an annual salary of $18,000 (right around the U.S. poverty line for a family). There wives have to work to support their families and to get health insurance. They spend hours a day out of the spotlight answering emails from desperate, hurting fans in search of hope. And this is a band that has had #1 songs and headlining tours.
I’m fine with disliking the music, but impugning the motives of an entire industry with a quick unsubstantiated sentence is unacceptable. So is diminishing someone’s faith because they value music differently. Be careful, my friend, for the measures you use to judge others will be used to measure you.
For anyone disillusioned by this, check out Derek Webb’s solo stuff. Just sayin’. A refreshing, much needed take…
And funny that we often complain about how consumeristic the church can be, but when something doesn’t measure up to our standard of good…we trash the hell out of it.
Sorry, there is a difference between art criticism and plain criticism. I’m not sure where the response to this song falls.
What really makes this topic annoying to me is the rhetoric that some preach that if a band doesn’t mention God, Jesus, etc. then we shouldn’t listen to it. No joke I have heard several sermons dedicated to this topic. People believe that (my wife included) and some people take it too far.
The band Thrice is one of the best bands ever. Dustin Kensrue’s lyrics often have biblical messages and or situations in them. I tried telling this to the two youth pastors at my church and even quoted some of the lyrics. However, due to Thrice not being a Christian band (although clearly the singer is a Christian) they wouldn’t even listen to them.
This bubble that Christians create to isolate themselves from the world is their undoing. There are some good Christian artists, but most of them sound the same (seriously I’ve heard this Klove station where every single song sounded like a carbon copy of the previous one).
Bands that cross into the maintstream or who aren’t afraid of going outside the bubble is who are making a difference for God. Bands that conform to the cliche Christian band are only there for Christians and basically amount to white noise.
P.s. This is the same reason that whatever moron invented chirped, or whatever the christian twitter is called, is really missing it. It is just another place to isolate christians and keep them from interacting with the world we were called to interact with. Amazing.
I was going to make a comment about how I don’t listen to Christian music because it’s cheesy and cliche. Then I noticed the Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane” on my ipod. Something about specks and logs and eyeballs comes to mind.
What frightens me most is that, cliche or not, most decisions in the vein of mass media are decided by what most people *want* to hear.
I think lesClaypool is right to an extent. The reason that Christian music is a money machine is because of the lack of money. Zach, I too have close friends in the Christian industry that make about $1,000 a month for each member. It’s sad. I wrote a song on their last record thinking I would get some cash from it. Boy was I wrong. These bands have to tour and tour and tour so much that for one, they don’t have time to write a record. Then they get a month off, have to spend it in a studio with a joke of a budget, and we wonder why the music sucks. It’s the same way with the writers. They have a quota to meet, and a deadline to meet them, and they’re going to write what sells. Then again, maybe it doesn’t sell anymore because it’s no good. Is there as much cheese and cliche’s in mainstream music? Absolutely. But there’s also creative freedom, which I KNOW Christian bands don’t have much of. If you sign a moderately decent mainstream deal, you’ll have more time to write your records, less time away from your family, and more cash while you do it. Point being, I can name lots of GREAT bands with GREAT songs. I don’t think any are in the Christian market, and I wish it weren’t that way.
Agree with Zach, but with many of the other comments as well. I listen to Christian rock (Air1) but keep my expectations in check. I don’t consider this art, so I’m not disappointed when the envelope isn’t pushed. But I do get annoyed when I hear a song and ask myself, “hey, is that Deathcab For Cutie?” because much of what’s “popular” is just derivative. So I’m realistic. If I want to listen to something more creative, I change the station. But when a song like this Kutless one (which I like, btw) is what I want to hear (more for the message-cliched though they may be) then that’s what I listen to. Maybe you’re not giving the consumer/listener enough credit to discern message from art?
Maybe You’re right Frank, but why can’t they surround their message with good art? Can’t the two go hand in hand? In fact, isn’t weaving a message through a song subtly and gracefully art in it’s greatest form? As a songwriter, it’s really not THAT hard to avoid cliches. I believe there’s even a time and place for them, if used creatively. For me the bottom line is, as a Christian, when I turn on the Christian radio station, I get depressed. The “art” is so bad that I can’t hear the message.
This is why I listening to Christian radio stations when I’m sad. It’s always so angsty. But when I’m happy I listen to secualar stations because they play music that makes you wanna dance. Like “I Gotta Feeling..” Wooohooo.
Clay, I wish they would. And sometimes it sounds like they do, but I never hear it consistently from a single band/artist. So I seldom buy any of their albums because I know the one song I like is going to be the only one song I like. I feel the same about country, frankly, even though I enjoy listening to it from time to time. Maybe they need a ‘college radio’ movement in Christian music, where artists that push the medium more can be highlighted. But just like ‘indie’ music, it won’t sell except for the one hit that makes them popular. We have to remember that popular radio is, well, ‘pop’. Like I said, I keep my expectations in check. Sorry it depresses you. If I was a singer/songwriter I’d probably feel the same way.
Holy Cliche Land, Batman!
Seriously, this is why I don’t listen to Christian music. At all. I get the hysterical urge to put on my Captain…Saaave a *cough* suit. Which… isn’t my style at all. Therefore, the closest I get is Creed, who at least had the style and good sense to actually, yanno, sound like human beings rather than walking Testamints.
Okay, and I also like a good headbang every once in awhile.
I work in radio, yeah there are cliches, but what mainstream pop song doesn’t have them? I’ve played Lady Gaga, TPain & Britney on the radio etc and that’s just pop music in general.
I take calls from listeners everyday and there is not a song out right now that gets more positive response from listeners than this Kutless song. You should hear the stories. “I have been having a terrible week, and God totally spoke to me through that song… the line that says “It doesn’t matter what you’ve heard Impossible is not a word It’s just a reason for someone not to try Everybody’s scared to death When they decide to take that step Out on the water, It’ll be alright…” That was exactly what I needed to hear this morning. Thanks for the encouragement! Your music is a lifeline for me.”
I’ve worked in mainstream & CCM Radio and CCM really doesn’t seem to be all about the money like you said. The people working at the labels really do get into this to reach people for God. So please be nicer in the way you fling mud. There are a LOT of people in this who really are trying to spread the Word.
Mr. Turner,
I’m sure Kutless is glad to know your opinion. The body of Christ is so fortunate to have “relevant” writers such as yourself to call bands like Kutless out on their cliche’s while thousands are being touched by their music every day.
I’m sure they’re glad to have this speck removed from their eye. Hang on…you’ve got something in yours.