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Is there ANY good contemporary Christian music?

L

lukeprog

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Is there ANY good contemporary Christian music?

I have looked long and hard for a Christian artist of musical value and come up with nothing. Mark Heard is good but hardly innovative, P.O.D. are innovative but not very good, and no other artists I've come across have been anything but wholly derivative.

Are there any musically or artistically significant contemporary Christian artists? I'm looking for a Christian artist who writes music that would be important to a music historian. Not music that is important to an industry or a religious movement, but to the progress of music. For example, a Christian artist that Piero Scaruffi might see as significant.

Because the purpose of Christian music is to get across a message or facilitate sing-a-long worship, I accept that good music is not it's primary purpose. Just as pop music is written to sell records and is therefore rarely musically good. That's okay, and Christian musical artists have been almost as successful with inspiring Godly living and promoting worship as pop artists have been with selling records. And that's a great thing, and I applaud it. But you'd think there'd be a few Christian artists concerned with writing significant music.

Anyone?
 
I think that as far as Christian music goes, the lyrics are most important. Of course I'd want the music to sound good like it was well-written. The point of Christian music is to glorify God and be uplifting to the believer. I'm not sure I really understand what you mean though... Are you saying that some Christian music is insignificant because of the way it's written?
 
I'm saying that virtually all Christian music is - pardon my candidness - worthless (as music) to people who have studied serious music. I couldn't say if it's lyrically or religiously important, but musically the entire genre is derivative and horribly boring... no matter what it "sounds" like. Sounds is what made me mistake "Control" by Mute Math for Coldplay. Music is what differentiates The Velvet Underground from The Byrds, though they "sound" the same to some people.

I know I'm sounding pretty stuffy with all this... but my aim is to find Christian music I can be excited about, because creativity and beauty in music is how I most experience God's pleasure. And so far that pleasure has had to come almost exclusively through music by gifted secular artists like Captain Beefheart, Faust, early Metallica, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Klaus Schulze, Pierre Boulez, John C. Adams, Philip Glass, Arvo Part, Glenn Branca, and hundreds more. I simply haven't found any artists with that level of musical genius that I know are Christians. That's why I'm asking for recommendations from serious music fans.
 
I have not. I'm finding several artists named Beloved. Could you name your favorite Beloved album or provide a link?
 
I don't think I'd be into Beloved or Burlap to Cashmere, but i haven't heard them. Thanks.
 
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