My Latest Rant about Christian Music
I posted two posts today on a Christian music board and thought I'd share them here because I felt like it...

I started off responding to a comment that a Christian music exec had made in an article appearing in Christianity Today about the CCM (contemporary Christian music) biz. He had been quoted as saying, "The dirty little secret is [the corporate parent] could [not] care less what your content is -- if it's a hit, they could [not] care less. Whether you're talking about Christ or Satan, doesn't matter to them. Does it sell, and not just does it sell -- does it make the [PNL] number? Making the number is the only guiding force in corporate Christian music making today."

My response:

Well, my answer to that would be -- that's in the Christian music industry. Of course they don't care how Christian artists talk to Christian audiences in the Christian market. The more they sing about Christ the better. That's probably how the secular parent company looks at it, since they see the Christian label which they own as serving a certain niche market. Just like if a magazine publisher bought up a line of skin mags, they'd want the skin mags to continue showing lots of skin.

But I think the gatekeepers of mainstream culture DO care if it comes to allowing Christian artists access to the wider culture. I recall hearing or reading where a mainstream source said that they never would have accepted Sixpence None the Richer if they had known from the start that they were CCM. John Cooper of Skillet has talked about playing showcases for secular labels and finding resistance to getting signed. dc Talk has talked about some secular stations being unwilling to play their songs, telling them "we don't play Christian music." So, I'd say there is definitely resistance if a CCM artist wants to impact the wider culture. But within the CCM market itself, secular companies don't care what is being said, as long as it sells good in that market.

As I said in another thread here, in the mainstream market, it's more than just good sales that get you coverage, there's also the "cool" factor to be considered. I don't think that "coolness" is a factor in the CCM industry, so that's why sales are the main concern. But in the secular mainstream industry, MTV, Spin, Rolling Stone, etc. would rather give coverage to an artist who seems cool, hip, or buzzworthy even if that artist sells less than a CCM artist does. (For example, see the coverage that bands like Phantom Planet and The White Stripes are getting currently.) Why? Probably because it makes MTV, Spin, Rolling Stone, etc. look cool and hip if they are always talking about these cool and hip artists. If they covered easy listening, country, or CCM, that might go against their attempts to be seen as hipper than thou.

Unfortunately for CCM, the cooler artists in CCM don't usually sell as much as the duller CCM artists do. So, high-selling CCM artists who would deserve mainstream coverage because of their high sales are often too unhip to be covered (e.g., MWS, SCC, Point of Grace, Avalon, etc.) and lower-selling CCM artists like Skillet, and even RSJ in my opinion, are cool but don't have enough sales action to make mainstream coverage inevitable at some point. And it's a Catch-22: the more coverage you get, the better sales often get. That's why so many CCM albums do well the first week but then drop off, because there's no coverage by the secular mainstream that would educate a potential buyer who the artist is, what their music is like, etc. which would sustain sales better as new customers find out about the artist.

By the way, has anyone else noticed how well MercyMe's album is doing on the Billboard top album charts? It's actually moving up the charts instead of down. It's at like #67 or something this week -- a little higher than Jars of Clay's new album (only in its 2nd week, too), I think! The funny thing is that I'm a fan of Christian music, but I've never even heard that band. (I don't listen much to Christian radio at all. I pay attention to Christian videos on TV, but haven't seen one by them yet.) I would guess that most of their sales are probably from the Christian marketplace, which must be slowly learning about the group and driving them up the chart. Now if only the secular gatekeepers will notice this and actually do a profile of them. But will they? If not, why not?


In response to my post, another poster said that if I agree that CCM is denied mainstream exposure, "would it not follow that the "Christian" music label and ghetto/subculture actually IS a hinderance to artists who want to make an impact in the world at large?" Evidently he was implying that Christian artists should abandon the CCM genre if they want to be heard on secular radio. Problem solved, right?

My response:

Yes the "Christian" label is a hindrance, but why? Only because of the prejudice that the world at large has for the Christian music label. So, I think we ought to fight that prejudice not surrender to it.

If you ever want to know my opinion about anything in CCM, just compare it to my favorite medium, comicbooks. Comics writers would get a lot more respect if they wrote novels instead of comics and reach a wider audience as well. Does it then naturally follow that they should leave comics and write novels instead? Not if they want to help comics. Rather they should continue creating literate comics and hope that eventually the stigma against comics will erode, as it has been doing considering that publications like Entertainment Weekly and Salon.com have reviewed new comics on occasion. (Probably more than they review CCM...)

I had mentioned mainstream coverage of The White Stripes in my previous post. I picked them out of the air as an example because I'd happened to see their video on MTV, had seen a profile of them in an alternative rock music mag a couple days ago, and had noticed that they hadn't yet broken into Billboard's Top 100 albums list. In other words, I was being exposed to this band without even trying to be, whereas I hadn't even heard a song by a much better-selling CCM band (MercyMe) and I'm actually a Christian music fan. Sounds a bit odd, huh? Maybe that's why I'd like more CCM exposure in the mainstream -- not just so non-fans can be exposed to it, but so CCM fans like MYSELF can get more exposure to CCM! (Religious outlets don't do a good job of this.)

Anyway, I decided to do a search on Yahoo to see if I was being unfair to secular bands like The White Stripes. Were they really getting a lot of exposure despite their low sales, compared to the lack of exposure that better-selling CCM artists were getting?

Yahoo results for The White Stripes include pages about them at the websites of the BBC, MTV, Time magazine, New Musical Express, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, etc. The Time article notes that the band has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, and Rolling Stone. MTV's site has an A to Z list of many artists, and their page for The White Stripes is at
http://www.mtv.com/bands/az/white_stripes/artist.jhtml
where you can see a photo of the band, download their song and video, read their bio, and read MTV news items about them. The most recent news item was from yesterday, in MTV's overview of this week's Billboard album chart. MTV's overview doesn't mention any of the CCM albums that charted well this week, such as the albums of Kirk Franklin (#21 both this week & last week), MercyMe (#67 this week, #75 last week), Jars of Clay (#70 this week, debuted at #28 last week), Michael W. Smith (#73 this week, #67 last week), or Plus One (#86 this week, #62 last week, debuted at #29 three weeks ago).

But MTV's overview DOES note, "The White Stripes will spend their second week on the chart 28 spots higher than their first, with [their album] White Blood Cells coming in at #157 with almost 8,500 more copies sold." You can read their slanted overview yourself at
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1452989/20020320/story.jhtml

Most Christian artists do not have their own entry in the A to Z band list at MTV's site. Kirk Franklin isn't even listed there (though Aretha Franklin is). Plus One are not listed. Jars of Clay are listed, but the only thing on MTV's page for them is a single news item from 1997. Third Day have a page on MTV's site, too, but the only thing on it is a news item about them beating P.O.D. in the Dove Awards last year. Meanwhile, secular bands which have yet to enter Billboard's top 100 albums chart, like The White Stripes and Phantom Planet, ARE included on MTV's band list however.

I wonder where the Newsboys' new album will chart when it comes out next week. (It will appear on the Billboard chart that comes out April 4th.) Why bother caring, if even great sales won't garner mainstream coverage?

The other poster had offered as a reason why MercyMe would not garner secular coverage the following: "Again, relevance. Mercy Me has nothing of value to say to a person who is not a believer (and musically they are not a risk-taking group, either). Their music is all mostly vertical -- man to God. Most non-Christians aren't going to be interested in that and, unlike other 'spiritual' type music, the Christian message largely will get ignored because it is deemed more exclusive and 'judgemental.'"

But we keep hearing about how groups like P.O.D. and Lifehouse and Creed are really giving the same message as Christian music, and yet they are accepted by the mainstream. Aren't the lyrics to "Hanging by a Moment" and "Alive" vertical? And yet nobody ever accused them of having lyrics which weren't relevant to a mainstream audience. It seems to me that the only difference is the Christian record label. If it's considered Christian music, the mainstream gatekeepers don't give it coverage for the most part, even if it sells well. That's not right, and we should criticize injustice, not accept it as normal or acceptable.