An Objective Approach to Contemporary Worship Music

In addition to my day job as a pastor (and seminary student), I serve as the reviews editor for the journal Global Forum on Arts and Christian Faith. GFACF is published online, and it's free, so you should sign up now to get on the mailing list for notifications of new articles and reviews.

Recently the journal published an article about Contemporary Worship Songs by Lester Ruth, Research Professor of Christian Worship at Duke Divinity School. Besides being my academic advisor, teacher, and friend, Dr. Ruth is a thorough and thoughtful scholar, and our journal was honored to publish his article: "How 'Pop' Are the New Worship Songs? Investigating the Levels of Popular Cultural Influence on Contemporary Worship Music."

Popular literature tends to trumpet how great, or how terrible, pop music styles have been for the church. Yet few people actually sit down and systematically comb through data such as song lyrics and CCLI reports. That's what Dr. Ruth does here. Using objective research methods, he analyzes the lyrics of a large body of Contemporary Worship Songs (CWS). Here are three things I learned from his research:

1. We pray differently than our grandparents did. Even though English speakers have not used words like "thee" and "thou" in their day-to-day speech for quite some time, church leaders were still using them, especially when praying out loud, well into the latter half of the 20th century. In the 1960s, worship songs began losing these archaic English words, and they were almost gone completely by the 1980s. (Bible translations produced over this period also reflect this change.) CWS may not be totally responsible for the shift to familiar pronouns, but studying the changes in song lyrics over the past 50 years reveals just how differently we pray now. Do you know people who still use "thy," "thine," "thee," and "thou" when they pray out loud? Most pastors were still praying that way 40 years ago.

2. Contemporary songs are getting more complicated. The earliest "contemporary" songs were mostly strophic -- that is, they were just a set of verses that repeated the same tune: Verse 1, Verse 2, Verse 3, etc. Later, choruses (or refrains) were added: Verse 1, Chorus, Verse 2, Chorus, etc. ("Lord I Lift Your Name on High.") Nowadays the newest songs often have bridges: Verse 1, Chorus, Verse 2, Chorus, Bridge, Chorus, etc. ("How Great is Our God.") There are even "pre-chorus" features in some songs. Each of these structures has a twist that sets it apart from the rest of the song. That means that a congregation has to learn at least three different parts to sing a typical worship song today. If you don't like CWS, don't say that it's because the songs are too easy, because that's not true anymore.

3. Newer songs don't rhyme (as much). This is a trend that I had not noticed myself, but it's true: the AABB and ABAB rhyming schemes and strict meters (meaning, standard numbers of syllables on each line) of traditional hymns are things of the past. Dr. Ruth attributes this to songwriters' desire for more natural, colloquial speech patterns, which is something that's been happening in secular pop music through the same time period. Among other things, this shows that the lyrics and tunes of contemporary worship songs are meant to stay together -- no more mixing and matching of words and music that our great-grandparents did with hymns.

Whether you think CWS is the best or the worst thing to happen to the church, you will learn something new from reading this article. May Dr. Ruth's number increase, leading to more objective studies of contemporary worship music.

Creating Hit Songs and Planning Worship

A few artists manage to make hits that also win Grammys

Since the 58th Grammy Awards are presented on Monday night (February 15), this seems like a good time to think about hit songs. That's not because Grammys necessarily go to hit-makers. In fact, a Grammy is just a recognition by one's peers in the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of a quality song or record. Hits, by contrast, are measured by how many times someone actually pays to listen to a song by buying a copy, streaming it, or hearing it on a broadcast. Ask musicians whether they would rather have a Grammy or a hit song: they can put a Grammy on their mantle, but they can take a hit to the bank.

Record executives know that hits are not composed as much as they are created through extensive promotion. A pop song can have all the elements necessary to break through: a driving beat, a melodic hook, memorable words, and a flawless performance by a star. But if people don't hear a song enough times to become familiar with it, then that recording will never break into the playlists of the Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) format. Even in this age of the stream and download, CHR (think Top 40) is still the arbiter of what gets bought and played.

Two recent books discuss how this familiarity works for listeners and record companies. For example, in The Song Machine John Seabrook describes the listening habits of waitresses at the end of their shift at a certain restaurant. After all the customers were gone at the end of the night, when the wait staff had full control of the jukebox, they continued to select the same hit songs that had been playing all day. Instead of being tired of those tunes, the staff wanted to hear the hits that they were familiar with. This draw of the familiar is also described in Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit. He says that, when asked directly, most Americans will tell you they dislike the music of Celine Dion. However, their real listening habits show that they actually select her hit songs when given the option.

Duhigg says that these people are not lying about their low view of cheesy pop music. His point, along with Seabrook's jukebox example, is that quality and novelty are not the only things -- perhaps not even the primary things -- that drive our listening habits. We actually choose to listen to bad songs that we know over good ones that are new to us. (Disclosure: my own Spotify playlists bear this out.) That is why record companies work to create familiarity. Indeed, hits don't just "happen."

This has implications for planning worship services. People in churches have the same kind of attachment to the familiar -- they come hoping to encounter the songs, movements, visual elements, and people they know. Yet pastors and worship leaders are constantly trying to introduce new things in those services, thereby disrupting the worshippers' attachment to the familiar. Church leaders could learn some strategies from record executives for helping people fall in love with new things, creating familiarity through intentional planning. Duhigg's book includes a copy of a radio station's playlist, showing that DJs introduce new songs by sandwiching them between familiar hits that listeners already know and like. CHR radio listeners never have to endure more than 3 minutes of something unfamiliar before they land back on a known song. Maybe worship services should be planned with the same kind of thoughtfulness. Adding a new song to next week's lineup? Put it between two standards that people love and sing by heart. Changing the way you are doing Communion? Then choose a well-known song to accompany the giving of the elements. After a few weeks of carefully placing something new next to the familiar, you may have a "hit" on your hands.