The Battle of 9/11

Tomorrow our country will remember the horrific events of September 11, 2001—the date (now six years ago) that altered history and changed our country’s direction in ways we know only too well. There will be memorials, cable specials, wall-to-wall coverage on Fox and CNN, and probably some pretty somber moments.

But isn’t it about time we got over 9/11? So goes the argument of many who are tired of 9/11 being invoked in culture to induce emotional acquiescence to political, hegemonic manipulation. Not that this is what Interscope and Roc-A-Fella records had in mind, but they’ve come up with a surefire way to divert pop-culture’s attention away from lamentation and towards their wallets on 9/11: release the two biggest rap albums of the year!

On 9/11, the third albums of both 50 Cent (aka Curtis Jackson) and Kanye West (aka Kanye West) will be released. The albums are titled Curtis and Graduation, respectively. Much has been made of the rivalry between the two, as they go head to head to prove who is the biggest name in the game (i.e. whose album will sell the most copies in the first week of sales).

The 50/Kanye rivalry goes back at least to 2005, when Kanye uttered his infamous “George Bush hates black people” line during a post-Katrina telethon. 50 soon responded by publicly supporting George W. Bush and his hurricane efforts (even though it isn’t clear whether 50 has or will ever vote in a political election).

Now the rivalry has gone beyond politics, however, with the epic album battle looming. In recent weeks, 50 has even gone so far as to proclaim that if he can’t outsell Kanye, he’ll retire from rap forever, a claim he later retracted (to the sadness of Tipper Gore), but which did the trick it was likely intended for: increasing the hype about the 9/11 showdown. Kanye has since thanked 50 for the absurd publicity, and brushed off any notion that he’s at all worried about competition from 50 Cent.

In fact, Kanye recently told a magazine that his biggest inspiration and rival in the game right now is not 50 Cent, but Justin Timberlake, who he calls “the only other person that gets an across-the-board response and respect” from both white and black radio. In the same interview he compares himself and Timberlake to Michael Jackson and Prince back in the ‘day—versatile competitors who “pushed each other.”

Without having heard either of the two albums yet, it’s hard to tell which one will be better (though it’s a safe bet, if past is any measure, that Kanye will win over the critics even as 50 wins over the charts). Both albums feature amazing guest stars. Kanye collabs with Mos Def, Chris Martin, and Young Jeezy (as well as uber-hipster producer Jon Brion), while Fitty invokes the talents of a bunch of white dudes (Robin Thicke, Eminem, and Justin Timberlake).

It would seem that Kanye and 50 have different fanbases, so I’m not sure why their head-to-head rivalry is so ballyhooed. 50 is really popular among the TRL crowd, and people who appreciate the fact that he’s riddled with bullet holes and actually did deal crack as a 12 year old. Kanye, on the other hand, appeals to yuppie Obama fans and middle class hipster kids, mainly because he raps as if he actually did graduate 12th grade English, and because he samples people like Steely Dan, Daft Punk, and Michael Jackson (on Graduation).

Whoever wins the 9/11 prize, it will likely make little difference. Both of these albums will be huge sellers, probably in the top five of the year. And it should be clear what all of the supposed rivalry controversy is really about: creating buzz and anticipation so as to sell more copies. That’s what every rivalry is about in Hollywood: making more money. Some wise entertainment guru discovered long ago that audiences love conflict, drama, and competition. It’s our culture’s biggest source of entertainment (i.e. sports). Thus, why not create competition and rivalry where there is none? Everything sells better as a fight. This month it's Kanye v. 50, next September it's Clinton v. Romney. It'll be a knock-down, drag-out ratings bonanza.

The Tragedy of (Most) Modern Worship Music

I’ve been thinking a lot about "worship music" these days. I’m very suspicious of the term. I’ve been suspicious of it for a long time, so much so that at a point during my time at Wheaton College, whenever I’d get a “worship” CD in the mail (I was A&E editor of the newspaper; I got lots of free CDs), I’d rarely even open it. Here are just some of the reasons why I’ve become so jaded with what modern evangelicals have come to call worship music:

• It’s 90% crappy, knock-off Keane or secondhand U2 (i.e. it is usually very predictable and unoriginal)
• It’s an industry. How bizarre and kind of disgusting that branding your music as “worship” and selling it as an “experience” earns the most money in CCM.
• It’s a very fickle, trendy industry. Every month there’s a new “it” song that eventually filters down to every evangelical church across the world… only to be replaced by a new “it” song a month later. No more standards, no more canons.
• It turns its nose up at good writing. Most worship music wallows in bad water imagery, fire metaphor, or pseudo-sexual verbiage (“Jesus your love is ravishing, intoxicating, orgasmic, etc).
• It’s more about creating an emotional response than eliciting a profound spiritual reflection. The measure of a good worship leader is often how many in the audience stand up or raise their hands out of their own volition.
• It’s much too happy and self-satisfied. “Make a joyful noise” does not mean “don’t worry, be happy.” Some of the most beautiful (and yes, joyful) hymns have come from places of sorrow and brokenness (e.g. “It is Well With My Soul”)
• It’s much too focused on the words. Can’t the music be worshipful on its own? Could not an all-instrumental song be just as worshipful as one with lyrics?

So, as you can see, I have issues with modern worship music. It really pains me, because I want to like it; I want to think that God is pleased by it. But I can’t get over the fact that it is mostly just mediocre, conservative, and stuck in a box. Worship is so much broader than just a “genre” of music that can be “entered in to” as a corporate, religious activity. Worship is much bigger than that.

Worship music should be first and foremost honest music, and excellent music (artistically). It should come from the same place any musician goes to when writing a song. If that place is dark and has only a glimmer of hope, then that is your worship, and God rejoices in it (see Pedro the Lion sing “Be Thou My Vision”). If that place is effervescent and giddy about life, and that is honestly where you’re at, sing about it. Don’t force your music into formulas. Let it come out organically, creatively. There is nothing more worshipful than using our creative minds and talents to create the best and most creative thing we possibly can. Not the most commercial—not what is easy listening or reductive. No, our worship music should not be made for the masses.

Even as I’ve been ranting and raving about worship music and how bad it is, there are signs that it is beginning to get better. Thankfully there are Christian musicians out there beginning to realize that God is also honored by music that doesn’t have His name in it! Music can be about so much and still, in the end, be about God.

Here is a sampling of artists who I think make artful, forward-thinking music that is also rather worshipful. Some are more obviously “worship” artists, while others are just Christians making beautiful music. But most importantly, all are good.

• The Brilliance
• Future of Forestry
• Sandra McCracken
• The Welcome Wagon
• Half-handed Cloud
• Aaron Strumpel
• Young Oceans
• Audrey Assad
• John Mark McMillan
• Josh Garrels
• King's Kaleidoscope
• Sara Groves
• Andrew Peterson
• All Sons and Daughters
• Bifrost Arts
• Stuart Townend
• Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus

(This post has been updated since its original posting in 2007)

Over the Rhine Releases The Trumpet Child

Today is a rare day. It is an album release day from Over the Rhine, the world’s best band you’ve never heard of. I know that’s clichéd, but it’s really true. You must give Over the Rhine a listen… they’ve been at it for fifteen+ years, and have created some of the best American music of the last decade (seriously).

Anyway, you can read my review of their new album, The Trumpet Child, here.

Listening to a new album from Over the Rhine is like coming home after a long vacation—or remembering some old, long-forgotten joy. Perhaps it’s because I have so many memories associated with the band and their music, among them:

• Being introduced to their music in college by my friend and roommate Ryan Hamm (whose incessant play of Good Dog Bad Dog won me over).
• Declaring March '03 “Over the Rhine month” in the Wheaton College school newspaper, The Record (I was entertainment editor at the time, and evidently had license to declare random “months” such as this), and letting Ryan review the major albums of OTR’s oeuvre for four weeks straight.
• Having dinner with Linford before an Over the Rhine concert at Wheaton. He spoke with such poetry.
• Seeing OTR perform the perfect concert at Schubas (an intimate tavern-like venue in Chicago) in October of 2003. To this day, it is not only the best concert I’ve seen them play (and I’ve seen them live six times), but also the best concert I’ve ever seen anybody play (and I had just seen Simon and Garfunkel and Radiohead the month before).
• Walking out from a January OTR concert at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, into a fluffy white snowstorm, the lyrics of Snow Angel still lingering in the air.

For me, Over the Rhine represents a specific time in my life, and I suppose all good music does this to us—it brings to mind a memory, a song or a sound that is forever replayable in our mind. Perhaps Linford says it best in the liner notes of Trumpet:

And me, my first memory, the sound of a trumpet at a tent meeting revival, I was sitting on my mother’s lap, I remember that bright brass bell, that eggtooth blast waking me up, snapping the world into focus, piercing the womb of distant muffled things, stirring my conscious mind, the sound of a trumpet! And I remember the small wooden stage at the front of the tent, strings of bare lightbulbs, my sister Grace’s braids, and me forming my first real thought: I need to be where the sound is coming from.

For me, Over the Rhine’s music does just this: it snaps the world into focus. I need to be where the sound is coming from, and so do you.

The Search Circa 1992

I just finished Jon Krakauer’s fantastic book Into the Wild, which I wanted to read before the film version (directed by Sean Penn) comes out this September. The book tells the story of Chris McCandless, who graduated college in 1990 and went on a two year trek across North America in search of raw, transcendent experience. Tired of a predictable, bourgeois existence in suburban D.C., McCandless decided to “escape” from the real world that frustrated him. He drove his car out into the Mojave desert, abandoned it, burned all his money, and proceeded to live as a wayfaring tramp and hobo for the next two years.

Into the Wild is a fascinating account of McCandless’ adventures as he travels throughout the American West—from South Dakota to the Salton Sea, Las Vegas to Astoria, Oregon, and finally to the Alaskan wilderness, where his Jack London-inspired quest came to a tragic end.

McCandless wrote in letters of his desire to break from “a life of security, conformity, and conservatism” in favor of “unconventional living.” As he writes:

“Nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future… The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”

McCandless longed for a richer, more natural and grounded existence than what his middle-class lot had outlined for him. I can’t help but compare him to another tragic, alienated soul of his generation—Kurt Cobain—who famously rebelled against the comfortable establishment he was born into.

Whereas Cobain vented his frustrations through drugs and music, and McCandless through communion with nature, both men epitomized the “grunge” rebellion and disillusionment of Generation X in the early 1990s. Call them slackers, or neo-hippies, or whatever—but they made explicit the “search” that haunts all generations.

Writer Douglas Coupland, who has come to be the literary voice of Generation X, described in 1995 the mindset of “X-ers” as being the desire “to hop off the merry-go-round of status, money, and social climbing that so often frames modern existence."

I think we all can relate to this desire at some points in our lives—when the weight of success and the expectations of family, society, and self become too heavy a burden. Whether McCandless and Cobain are to be respected or pitied (for their searches both ended in solitary deaths, in 1992 and 1994, respectively), I’ll leave to you to decide.

But regardless of their failures and ultimately tragic ends, McCandless and Cobain were earnest in their longings—and through culture (music, movies, books, etc) their rupturing of the status quo lives on for future wanderers to ponder.