Culture Study Podcast - How Christian Rock Fed the Culture Wars

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00:01:11.360 okay i am so excited for this episode and melody has a song queued up that she's going to play for

00:01:18.780 you leah and oh and then you're going to explain this song and what it means to someone who has

00:01:25.980 no context for it okay this is great this is a good challenge

00:01:48.780 I like that we're not that worried about them suing us.

00:01:59.540 We're like, DC Talk's not going to sue us.

00:02:02.060 Oh, yeah, no.

00:02:02.500 Okay, so, Leah, can you tell us what that rap is?

00:02:07.380 First off, I have to say I wish this podcast came with visuals

00:02:10.260 because I was having a really good time watching Melody rock out to it

00:02:14.480 because she knows the whole, all of the lyrics.

00:02:17.220 She made me watch the video yesterday, which I hadn't seen in quite a long time.

00:02:21.300 So, yeah.

00:02:22.620 So, okay.

00:02:23.240 So, who is this?

00:02:25.900 In my book, I write about this as the peak of contemporary Christian music.

00:02:31.440 The number one youth group band, a group called DC Talk.

00:02:35.600 And this is, I would say, their most culturally influential album.

00:02:41.100 It is called Jesus Freak.

00:02:43.060 That single, it sounds a lot like Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit.

00:02:47.220 In fact, if you play them on top of each other, you can find that on YouTube.

00:02:50.960 They are very, very similar, but it came out a few years later.

00:02:54.880 That's what I think makes it like the ultimate of contemporary Christian music.

00:02:59.300 If you want to understand this thing called CCM, I can't imagine a better starting point

00:03:03.480 than that particular song.

00:03:04.740 Do you remember that song?

00:03:06.260 Oh, oh my gosh.

00:03:07.100 Like that whole album brings me back to like a winter youth retreat for like ninth graders

00:03:14.940 at like an old camp right then it's like all the ninth graders from all the presbyterian churches

00:03:21.420 in the inland northwest and you're like this is so cool because you're going to meet all these

00:03:26.460 other ninth graders and then that's just plain like as you come in you're like wow cool and then 0.66

00:03:33.380 there's a talk about like how you shouldn't masturbate or something like that you pretty 0.93

00:03:37.620 much got it. This is the Culture Study Podcast and I'm Anne Helen Peterson. And I'm Leah Payne

00:03:48.920 and I'm author of God Gave Rock and Roll to You, A History of Contemporary Christian Music. So

00:03:54.040 we're going to talk so much about like the actual, the music, like what actually makes the music,

00:03:58.980 the ideology, all those things. But I want to acknowledge at the very beginning that we are

00:04:04.300 three people and i'm including melody here who grew up around christian music and know a fair

00:04:10.240 amount about it and we want to be careful because we have a really broad audience not to make this

00:04:16.600 episode too insidey baseball but we want to speak to people who like absolutely knew what that song

00:04:23.580 was but then also speak to people who are like what in the world is this and so i think what i

00:04:29.360 want to start with is underlining even if you know nothing about the history of Christian rock

00:04:35.700 why is it important for us to kind of recover this history and think about it in this context

00:04:41.540 yeah I think there are a lot of reasons why I think it's important to understand

00:04:44.720 one reason probably the chief reason that I think somebody who doesn't know much about

00:04:49.940 contemporary Christian music might want to know about it is that if you look at the music of this

00:04:55.920 kind of nebulous group that people label evangelicals. It's actually a mashup of a

00:05:00.440 lot of different groups. But if you look at the music of that group, you see the emergence of

00:05:08.240 a group of people who were really trying to shape American public life. So if you want to know why

00:05:13.980 a lot of the energy behind conservative, particularly conservative, white, evangelical

00:05:20.280 activists a lot of times the music was the leading indicator of how people were thinking

00:05:27.540 about what they should do so you know you talked about the youth group talk there were a lot of

00:05:33.620 youth group talks and music was a really important part of how evangelicals were trying to raise

00:05:40.520 their children and the types of political and theological values that they wanted them to have

00:05:46.280 And we see that like, for example, contemporary Christian music artists were at the vanguard of efforts to overturn Roe versus Wade.

00:05:56.540 Right. And so if you look at the music, you see a lot of their activism.

00:06:01.500 They were also really into wanting to shape how sex ed was done in public schools.

00:06:08.260 If you look at the music, there are lots of songs, as you mentioned, a lot of songs about sex and sexuality.

00:06:14.640 So some of the things that you might not see if you look at how like public statements from denominations or like official documents, you see in these unofficial ways, the things that are happening in youth group end up actually shaping how we think about our shared life together in this country.

00:06:32.920 I love this and I think you know what it brings to mind two things one is that music can function

00:06:39.960 as a form of propaganda and I think that we know that but then sometimes when we get focused on

00:06:47.320 like oh this is just artistry or like or oh this is beautiful like a hymn is beautiful or

00:06:53.860 more classical music like we forget the ways in which it has been wielded historically and that's

00:06:59.560 one of the things that i really appreciate about your book is it doesn't start in 1995 for the

00:07:04.800 beginning of the release of jesus freak like it this is like jesus freak emerges halfway through

00:07:10.160 the book um and i think there's an interesting way that we can talk about the power of these songs

00:07:16.380 in terms of like emotional persuasion the way that they functioned as part of conversion

00:07:24.200 narratives right like the yes like they singing and listening to music was very much part of the

00:07:30.960 overall project of converting people right getting people to this emotional space where they felt

00:07:37.200 like they wanted to convert and then also think too about how like the creation of an entire

00:07:42.300 industry was part and parcel of this larger project on the part of white evangelicals

00:07:47.140 to create an alternative cultural sphere like inclusive culture not inclusive as in welcoming

00:07:55.180 all people but a place where like if you were growing up in one of these households you could

00:08:00.540 get movies and music and books that all function within this universe that was as was called at the

00:08:08.000 time and still non-secular right right like we don't listen to secular music in this house

00:08:14.360 and this was always like a huge thing at the camp that I went to is that you weren't allowed to play

00:08:20.080 secular music on the boombox and what was considered secular and what wasn't like oh is

00:08:25.620 that up for debate oh yeah because this was also when I was a counselor in particular so the early

00:08:31.060 2000s it was like is creed secular oh yeah absolutely absolutely like or can you read

00:08:38.740 these lyrics into it is u2's 40 like right can we listen to u2 right if there is a song that

00:08:47.160 is based on a bible verse and that we also sing like another song about you know like around the

00:08:53.120 campfire so all of these questions though i think you know understanding that this was um part of

00:09:00.300 this larger project that we can see now in the movement to like create charter schools and right

00:09:06.280 make it legal to homeschool in whichever way you want across the nation like building a world that

00:09:12.040 is apart from the rest of the world yeah it's so interesting I'm so glad that you brought that up

00:09:18.100 and I think that's something that a lot of people who grew up in it felt but wouldn't necessarily

00:09:23.660 think to articulate in part because it's just you know it's like the air you breathe right and

00:09:28.680 until they sort of bumped up against some of the boundaries of it for many different reasons

00:09:34.700 Because it was a fairly strictly managed community, like the boundaries around it.

00:09:40.800 And I think one of the most interesting things to me about it is that it's a separate sphere, but with similar consumption patterns.

00:09:49.960 So it's like the idea is not to stop being an American consumer, but to express through your consumption the ideal, you know, citizen according to these evangelical values.

00:10:04.420 And I think that's the thing that makes it kind of puzzling to people on the outside.

00:10:10.640 But, you know, the idea that you're going to show your devotion through what you buy, I think, is at the heart of it.

00:10:17.860 And so it's like, you know, you buy this book, you buy this particular album.

00:10:22.900 And one of the fun things about when just the interesting things, one of the quirky things about the music is that the core customer of of this music was actually not teens.

00:10:33.340 that was those are the people who people you know the industry people wanted to be listening to it

00:10:38.020 but it was the moms of the teens that's the funny the core customer so it's like a it's a world

00:10:44.800 created and and maintained and a lot of times very strictly enforced by a particular set of moms

00:10:53.260 right and this is funny to me because my mom I think really disliked all Christian music even

00:10:58.880 though she was like a leader in the youth group and stuff um and that's because she loved all

00:11:03.720 other sorts of music and we can get into some of the like conversations about whether christian

00:11:08.920 music is good later but i think that she always was like are you sure you want to listen to this

00:11:15.420 but the whole idea and this seems so different from the rest of like music production is that

00:11:23.660 you have these people saying we are worried like our teens are vulnerable to the secular world

00:11:30.820 so in order to protect against them let's like create music that is ostensibly for them like

00:11:38.240 let's like create a bubble around them almost yeah you can really tell that these ideas gain

00:11:44.280 traction before the internet um yeah because so true yeah you know like now we you could not do

00:11:50.960 this is just be impossible you know right there's too many ways to sneak things for teenagers and

00:11:56.760 so one of the earliest versions of trying to save and protect the the young that I write about in

00:12:04.580 the book through music is teetotaling songs like temperance so from an early you know from the early

00:12:11.380 20th century there's this idea it's it corresponds to the rise of celebrity culture and the rise of

00:12:17.480 mass media and the rise of the United States as being like the largest purveyor of that yeah and

00:12:23.940 you can kind of see how people think okay look at this this incredible power you know radio and film

00:12:30.060 and you know all these things like what could we do and for a certain group of people it seemed

00:12:36.640 like the natural extension of that would be let's create media that engages young people and for a

00:12:44.380 long time they really struggled with music because rock and roll was like a big transgressive problem

00:12:51.140 um they eventually figured it out by the time you get to jesus freak that's like everything's

00:12:56.040 kicking into high gear they you know they they figured out a really successful strategy for that

00:13:00.820 but it was a tough nut to crack originally they had a hard time right right yeah like that that's

00:13:07.400 such a funny point that like because rock and roll was so closely associated with a certain

00:13:13.260 type of lifestyle like the music itself could not be appropriated for christian use for many

00:13:22.880 decades and then something begins to switch in the 90s right so in the in the 1950s a lot of the

00:13:30.160 problems that people had with with well there are two sets of problems that are kind of like

00:13:34.680 overlapping one is that rock was originally associated with black culture so for white

00:13:40.640 Americans generally that was a problem and and I'm not the first person who said this other

00:13:45.540 historians have argued that conversations about rock became kind of like a proxy conversation

00:13:50.040 about civil rights in the United States but then for both black and white communities who were

00:13:58.160 Pentecostal and because a lot of rock and roll came out of Pentecostal communities they were

00:14:03.480 frustrated by rock because they felt like it was taking the sounds of their church music and putting

00:14:09.780 it into like these terrible things like singing about things like sex like right one of the the

00:14:16.000 songs great balls of fire that the phrase great balls of fire was originally a reference to like

00:14:22.500 the holy spirit descending like tongues of fire on the practitioner and it's it's about speaking

00:14:28.720 in tongues but then if you know the song most people do great balls of fire it's a very thinly

00:14:33.900 veiled reference to sex so you can imagine church people it's not even it's not veiled he's talking 0.63

00:14:40.340 about sex you can imagine church people just being like what you took our the sound of our worship

00:14:45.400 and then you did this other thing with it so it was a really like there were a lot of reasons why

00:14:50.940 people had a hard time with it but around the 1970s there were a group of people um all over

00:14:57.860 the country but a lot of them were in on the west coast um hippie converts to christianity

00:15:03.560 people called jesus people um and oh yeah yeah yeah so if you i mean if you're familiar with

00:15:10.320 that world i'm sure you knew about like keith green and and people like randy stonehill and

00:15:15.480 um larry norman and and those folks created music that people like billy graham another kind of

00:15:21.500 parental figure who wanted to you know engage the young with media he recognized oh they've done

00:15:28.780 something here that we could harness for in their minds the good of of evangelical kids and so then

00:15:37.960 an industry takes off um because there's like a partnership between the people who are making it

00:15:42.640 the younger people who are making it and then these media makers who were actually really smart

00:15:48.040 about it. Hey everyone, it's Anne. We love making this show with you and we want to keep doing it

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00:16:54.060 so we have so many questions i was delighted by the diversity of questions that we received

00:17:01.700 and so many of them when we because often in our um in our little submission form we ask for

00:17:08.080 recommendations for a co-host we already knew that you were going to be our co-host but that's

00:17:11.960 just in the form. And so many people recommended you as the co-host. Oh my gosh, I'm so honored.

00:17:19.260 I know, right? So to sort through this history for the last 25, 30 years, we're going to get

00:17:27.580 into the questions. And this first one is from Marta. What was the machine behind Christian

00:17:33.380 rock and pop in the early 2000s? Where was all that money going? Were the bands actually

00:17:39.480 practicing Christians or devout? Or was this just a way to break into the music scene?

00:17:45.720 Some bands seem to have had legit staying power, bands like Switchfoot or Reliant K.

00:17:51.060 Why? I just want to deep dive into this whole world.

00:17:55.740 Okay, Marta, we have the book for you.

00:17:58.460 I love it, Marta. Oh my gosh, this is great. But let's pick apart her questions.

00:18:04.560 Okay. So the first question, and this I find really fascinating. So like, what was the industry

00:18:11.900 behind the boom of Christian music in the late 90s, early 2000s? And you were part of this world.

00:18:17.880 So I'm yeah, yeah. Um, that that's such a good question. Because the answer is that by the late

00:18:25.680 90s and early 2000s, the Christian music market had done what any growing market does, which is

00:18:32.080 it consolidates and is overtaken by corporate interests. So by the late nineties and early

00:18:39.880 two thousands, the vast majority of music that you would have heard on the radio that you'd

00:18:44.760 classify as contemporary Christian music was owned by non church related entities, corporate

00:18:51.860 entities. So, um, by that time, the money that you would get from like royalties from hearing

00:18:58.880 something on the radio or album sales a lot of that went to these massive corporations and so

00:19:06.220 that in a short the short answer is that I would say in the late 90s and early 2000s this is the

00:19:12.360 peak so there were a lot more artists that were able to make a living then so I think that the

00:19:19.080 question is getting at like by the time you get to that era it's basically the same people that

00:19:24.640 are making money off of Britney Spears are making money off of off of these groups and so there's

00:19:30.760 not really a distinction in terms of where the big money is going but there were a lot more bands too

00:19:37.080 so if you liked that world you had a lot more options because the kind of the big selling

00:19:42.740 groups could fund some of the less profitable groups and of course that's that's almost all

00:19:49.320 gone now so what about the second question about and maybe we can kind of be meta about this sure

00:19:55.840 this question just generally about like are they actually practicing christians yeah i think that

00:20:01.960 a lot of people wonder this just because with celebrity in general there's a lot of performance

00:20:07.860 of a particular image right and faith is a complicated thing and like a lot of these a lot

00:20:14.820 of these artists were people in their 20s and 30s and probably on their own faith journeys in so many

00:20:20.840 different ways. So how have you thought about this in the course of writing your book and doing this

00:20:25.260 research? I would say like in one sentence, I would say that most of the folks who got into

00:20:31.760 this business did so to use a bachelor term for the right reasons. They, you know, I think most

00:20:39.140 of them were personally quite devout. They felt like they wanted to do something for God. You

00:20:44.680 No, I think that's the vast majority.

00:20:47.320 I think the label of Christian and how it was defined in that world was very specific.

00:20:53.600 So I think that there were a lot of people who ended up being labeled as defectors or apostates

00:21:00.980 who they themselves would claim Christian identity, but it's not that really specific version

00:21:07.100 of a really particular kind of conservative Christian.

00:21:10.520 And so throughout the history of contemporary Christian music, there were people who would

00:21:17.600 be sort of dissenting voices that might get labeled by people inside it as outsiders.

00:21:24.140 But if you talk to them, they're like, hey, I'm a devout Christian.

00:21:27.200 I'm just not this kind.

00:21:29.120 So I think and then, you know, one of the things about the early the late 90s and early 0.94

00:21:33.540 aughts is that there were some artists and bands who came to see contemporary Christian

00:21:39.180 music as a kind of farm team for the general market yeah so sometimes you know they would

00:21:45.520 be seen as insincere and I don't necessarily label them as non-practicing Christians they

00:21:50.380 had different aspirations like they wanted to play stadium rock shows and they didn't want to

00:21:56.820 play churches so I don't know sometimes I think people interpreted that as being um hypocritical

00:22:03.940 but I think in the late 90s and early aughts there were a lot of examples of that kind of

00:22:08.380 thing working so some of them they were performing in youth groups and they'd rather be performing in

00:22:13.800 clubs um yeah and does that make them insincere i don't know you know it's when i think about how

00:22:20.600 what i was thinking when i was 19 i i had no idea what i was doing so right i think you know

00:22:27.080 people put a lot of weight on what teenagers were doing and i guess that's the nature of

00:22:33.040 american pop culture but i i sort of feel empathetic for a lot of them because i'm like

00:22:36.960 I'm so glad no one was following me around looking to me as a moral and spiritual exemplar

00:22:42.740 when I was 19 the closest I had to that was like being a camp counselor and like I'm kind of even

00:22:50.140 weirded out by that memory uh I do you know and I think we should be explicit that like

00:22:56.420 this world it was a very tiny box that you could be in in terms of like like things that could get

00:23:02.800 you excluded from this world or like seen as being bad or apostate like you know all these

00:23:09.680 different things it's if you were queer if you cheated on someone if you had sex before marriage

00:23:15.000 and someone knew about it absolutely if you use drugs and alcohol like and someone knew about it 0.97

00:23:21.420 and this is the thing as you point out lots of christians drink lots of christians have sex

00:23:28.020 before marriage like there are right but this was the interpretation within this particular 0.79

00:23:33.620 like white evangelical very conservative world was that those things were not

00:23:40.420 good role models right like that you were not being a good like christian role model and so

00:23:46.020 that was not allowed yeah that's one thing that i thought was so interesting i one thing i found

00:23:50.920 that i wasn't expecting to find was that they're actually a really small group of people who

00:23:55.580 created contemporary christian music and the vast majority come from three different groups but one

00:24:00.920 of them is a group called the holiness movement which is a really radical movement that got going

00:24:07.700 in the united states in the late 19th and early 20th century but these people practice this idea

00:24:12.540 that you want to demonstrate the power of god in your life through really radical external things

00:24:19.600 so you don't drink you don't dance you don't gamble you wear very modest clothing for a lot

00:24:24.680 of women in those communities, no makeup, don't cut your hair, no jewelry. So that movement created

00:24:30.820 a lot of the music. And so a lot of the people in contemporary Christian music were like the

00:24:35.820 grandkids of those people. So you can kind of see like, that's a really specific way of being

00:24:42.700 Christian. That like you said, like, this is so anecdotal, and I wish I had better statistics on

00:24:49.140 this. But I've talked to so many people who were like, I grew up Presbyterian, or I grew up

00:24:53.460 Methodist and their parents were kind of freaked out when they started getting involved in the

00:24:58.900 CCM world because it was like this kind of holiness culture that the parents were like

00:25:03.380 where are you getting this I think that that absolutely happened and also was a symptom of

00:25:07.880 that moment in the 90s and 2000s where a lot of what are called mainline Protestant churches so

00:25:13.640 things like Presbyterian churches I don't know of any Episcopals who got into CCM but maybe that

00:25:21.320 happened like method you know just like that there was this evangelical turn and it was especially

00:25:26.660 happening in the youth groups and in the youth movements the other thing so two things one

00:25:32.420 I went to maybe you went to this too I went to a youth a Christian rock uh festival called

00:25:41.060 creation at the gorge which is like the premier festival site in the pacific northwest and my mom

00:25:49.220 let me go because it was a christian rock thing we went with boys we didn't have any parents it

00:25:56.000 was amazing did you have that's so sunburned um i was so in hindsight i'm so mad because i didn't

00:26:02.720 go see lilith fair but i did go see creation but i have an incredibly incredibly vivid memory

00:26:09.140 so this is in central washington in july it's like 90 95 out and a bunch of people including

00:26:17.560 me and my friends had our bikini tops on because it was so hot you daring from the loudspeaker

00:26:24.880 the announcer said we need the women the godly women in attendance to be mindful of tempting

00:26:33.460 their christian brothers oh wow and basically put on some clothes right and like that i just 1.00

00:26:40.180 from the loudspeaker were you like what was that like for you as a team that would be so embarrassing

00:26:46.240 i would imagine well it was just it was like this is kind of the the reconciliation process that i

00:26:51.540 think a lot of people listening to this music or a part of this this culture were going through is

00:26:55.640 that you know i didn't go to private christian high school like i i didn't drink or or do drugs

00:27:02.960 when i was in high school and i but i like made out with guys and right had impure thoughts and

00:27:11.240 wore bikini tops right like and so Jezebel the every day of trying to manage this messaging

00:27:18.880 that was coming from both the music but also from other authority figures in my life

00:27:22.780 yes like how do I personally feel about this was what eventually led to my own what's often called

00:27:30.880 deconstruction of one's faith this is that's a term that's become popular recently and moving

00:27:35.740 away from the church in general so I know that there are some artists and this is part of the

00:27:41.940 question there are some artists who have publicly deconstructed or moved away from the faith I'm

00:27:48.440 thinking of Jennifer Knapp who was actually playing at creation and who I loved oh absolutely

00:27:54.220 yeah um came out as gay and how are there are there more that I don't know about yes and I have

00:28:01.440 to say that Jennifer Knapp was a source for this book and so I didn't my parents didn't my dad

00:28:10.160 really didn't like contemporary Christian music so it sounds a little bit like your mom he thought

00:28:13.920 it wasn't good music and so he didn't it irritated him so he didn't have it in our house which is so

00:28:19.280 funny so of course I was raised around that world I you know it was like just like the air you

00:28:24.180 breathe so it's not that I wasn't familiar with it it's just it didn't have like the same home

00:28:27.780 life that for a lot of people who are raised in it yeah yeah so I think maybe I just didn't take

00:28:32.800 it quite as to heart like you would if if it were but um but Jennifer Knapp I remember because I saw

00:28:39.000 her in college and I remember thinking wow that was great like she was she was great and she is

00:28:45.380 great we should tell we should tell uh listeners that her sound was very much in tune like she

00:28:50.780 could have played at Lilith Fair like she it was um her and a guitar and like beautiful soulful

00:28:58.060 songs that were very confessional to me like they felt like they felt very much in touch with like

00:29:04.300 how I was feeling as a teen yes and she was on uh Lilith Fair she she did she played Lilith Fair

00:29:10.600 yeah yeah um so yeah so she's you're totally right she was uh she was and is excellent um yeah and

00:29:18.320 I think one of the the sticking points for how people interpreted her when she came out the big

00:29:26.300 issue was that she would not renounce her christianity she's like I am a christian um and

00:29:32.440 so that was a really interesting you know like then all of a sudden that kind of puts her outside

00:29:36.620 the folds um but if you ask her you know she'll tell you that um so but yes there were lots of

00:29:45.160 lots of people who end up getting sidelined some of them go quietly some of them made noise one of

00:29:51.140 my favorite stories in here is from a woman who was really popular in the 80s her name was Leslie

00:29:57.740 Phillips and Leslie Phillips found the world to be very suffocating and in interviews she has talked

00:30:04.800 about how people like A&R people would tell her you sound too sexy and she's a great singer by the

00:30:12.560 way and so she'd be like well what am i doing that's you know it's just my voice you know what

00:30:16.180 should i do and they'd be like they don't didn't really have an answer but you know knock it off

00:30:20.140 um so at one point she basically tells them because they're um the contemporary christian

00:30:27.020 music labels oftentimes had morality clauses and there are other you know that's not that

00:30:32.660 unfamiliar to a lot of musical like secular or non-ccm yeah it's a classic in classic hollywood

00:30:39.780 it was a thing exactly i mean there's still some version in a lot of a lot of stars right right so

00:30:45.300 that's not that unusual but it was a fairly specific version of it and she essentially

00:30:49.820 told her label listen i've had sex outside of marriage i don't mind if people know about it

00:30:55.260 and then they let her out of her contract um according to her according to her but you know 0.97

00:30:59.700 the interesting thing about her i just have to say she went on she changed her name to sam phillips 1.00

00:31:04.600 and she did the Gilmore Girls music.

00:31:06.800 She's excellent.

00:31:07.680 So look her up. 0.98

00:31:08.800 That's just a fun Easter egg for people.

00:31:12.100 It didn't end up, that part didn't end up in the book,

00:31:13.780 but I feel like your listeners would be like-

00:31:16.160 100%.

00:31:17.080 Excellent.

00:31:17.900 Yeah, yeah.

00:31:18.440 So things turned out okay for her.

00:31:20.160 This is a great segue into our next question,

00:31:23.280 which is about the sound of the music itself.

00:31:26.280 And this comes from Sarah.

00:31:27.620 I have a longstanding theory that Christian rock

00:31:29.660 has an identifiable sound beyond its lyrical content.

00:31:33.180 In other words, I am convinced that I can identify the genre just flipping through radio stations.

00:31:39.400 Is there a musical production style or something else at play here?

00:31:43.080 Am I delusional?

00:31:44.320 A bit of context, I was a self-proclaimed Jesus freak in my teens, so I was heavily into Switchfoot and DC talk and the like until I left the church around 2004.

00:31:53.860 Okay, I agree with Sarah.

00:31:55.620 There is a sound.

00:31:56.640 I know exactly, like if I'm flipping through the radio stations, 100%, I know what it is.

00:32:01.480 And then the other thing that I will say is that there is a sound of what I think of as like the very right now Christian music, which is music that plays at all of Chip and Joanna Gaines's properties in Texas.

00:32:16.140 And it sounds like the Lumineers and it doesn't explicitly reference Jesus, but I know what's going on.

00:32:24.100 like I just know and also at any of the um Christian or church-owned coffee shops like

00:32:30.060 cool coffee shops that don't announce that they're Christian or church-owned but you know

00:32:35.720 yes and part of it is the demeanor of the baristas yes I always know um so I what are your thoughts

00:32:42.720 about this particular sound oh gosh so many I'm having like 50 all at once but um yes uh yes to

00:32:50.020 the question i think some of the sound comes from as ccm grew as an industry it it found itself in

00:32:57.620 nashville tennessee and there's there's a an actual nashville sound that is very polished as

00:33:02.600 a certain type of songwriting certain types of harmonies and i would say that a lot of people

00:33:07.620 who know how to identify contemporary christian music have had at one point in time a very like

00:33:12.980 a flash of a thought is this country or is this christian um so country music and contemporary

00:33:18.480 christian music they're both located in nashville so they they one reason is they use a lot of the

00:33:23.520 same session players like it's a lot of the same people who are creating it so that that's part of

00:33:27.840 the sound um but also i think contemporary christian music was really tailored especially

00:33:33.240 in that era to white suburban life yes so and moms right it has to be palatable to moms it has

00:33:40.680 to be moms moms have to want to listen to that stuff in the car now right when i'm with my

00:33:45.840 children in the car i have young children and i listen to the music i like so my children listen

00:33:51.040 to foo fighters um so but that's because i'm a woman of my you know of a certain age but um so

00:33:58.960 but what i'm saying is i control the music and so it had to be music that conservative christian

00:34:04.760 moms living in the suburbs would want to play in fact there are some funny stories about some of

00:34:09.540 the edgier bands like bands that were on labels like tooth and nail that had very a very different

00:34:16.740 aesthetic not the national sound and moms didn't like it so sometimes kids got away with listening

00:34:21.600 to kind of subversive messages from christian punk and ska and metal mostly because their moms

00:34:27.580 didn't like it so yeah a lot of it's like the the mom sound is what you're hearing was was pod one

00:34:34.120 of those is that yeah yeah yeah they were they were such an interesting band and i talk about

00:34:40.080 them as sort of the the end of that era because they had a mainstream record deal they didn't

00:34:46.120 come up you know when you were talking about being at a christian camp a lot of the sites

00:34:50.960 for christian music festivals were the same sites that a hundred years earlier those kids

00:34:56.700 grandparents had been having like tent revival meetings yeah um and pod is not they are not from

00:35:02.940 those networks so they came up from southern california they're not like white evangelical

00:35:08.300 youth group kids although they're quite evangelical but they just didn't come up from that network and

00:35:13.160 they had a mainstream label and so they they sort of proved that you could be super duper jesusy

00:35:19.680 but not be in that particular world so it's kind of the beginning of the end of that i think i think

00:35:26.660 there's also something to be said for christian music also sounding like sometimes like the b

00:35:33.600 minus version of of a particular genre do you know what i'm talking about of course so there's

00:35:39.940 this band third day that i was really i just loved third day so much and they sound i don't know like

00:35:46.720 they sound like watered down lifehouse which is kind of this one of those crossover maybe it's

00:35:53.220 christian bands which sounds like watered down creed which sounds like watered down pearl jam

00:35:58.320 right oh yeah so it's like all of this sort of derivativeness all the way down um yeah do you

00:36:04.940 know what i'm talking about absolutely um yes that that's a very there's there's no doubt about that

00:36:10.520 um and i think you know one of the things that's so interesting to me about that is i would say

00:36:15.920 that for the most part that was by design and the reason why it's not that people wanted to make

00:36:21.220 less good versions of it. But the whole industry, because it was created, one of the first big

00:36:26.860 executives in contemporary Christian music, a guy named Billy Ray Hearn, was a Southern Baptist

00:36:32.480 youth pastor before he became a record label executive. So he is the kind of guy who wants

00:36:39.480 to keep Southern Baptist kids Southern Baptist. And they were worried about like what rock and

00:36:44.220 roll and other kinds of music were doing to the young. And so what they did was they looked to

00:36:49.900 the general market and then looked for positive and encouraging alternatives to the general market.

00:36:57.500 So it's by design, it lags. And that was a really, there were people who were very frustrated by that

00:37:04.960 people. I talk about a couple of them, a guy named Steve Taylor and a guy named Charlie Peacock. And

00:37:09.140 I used to work for Charlie Peacock, who were very frustrated by that model and basically said the

00:37:15.120 philosophy that is upholding this is not going to get us anywhere we need to just create good art

00:37:20.820 and people will be attracted to whatever message we say if we create good art steve taylor um signed

00:37:27.980 a band called six pence none the richer charlie oh yeah yeah and and they would have they had a

00:37:32.720 mainstream trajectory um charlie peacock signed switchfoot and another artist named sarah mason

00:37:38.200 who had you know they were the kinds of bands that that you would hear in the background of wb shows

00:37:44.200 like teen romance um so that's like mainstream music but yeah i think for a lot of the bands

00:37:50.540 they were constantly frustrated um and that's why i ended up not being sustainable because

00:37:55.900 once you get to be a certain age as a teenager you can figure that stuff out you know for yourself

00:38:02.000 you know like when you're 11 or 12 it might not work but by the time you get to 16 you're kind

00:38:07.220 of like wait a minute i could just listen to pearl jam you know like if i really like this

00:38:13.280 I put a story in the book about marketers, CCM marketers would create these charts where they

00:38:19.280 would, and it was for youth pastors and moms and some kids where it'd say like, if you like this

00:38:23.980 band, you should listen to this band. So it's like, if you like Pearl Jam, you should listen

00:38:28.600 to Third Day or something like that. Yeah. And a lot of them are kind of absurd. The comparisons

00:38:32.760 don't make sense. But one of the funniest quotes that I came across in my research was from this

00:38:37.680 young woman who was like I was told if I liked the Beastie Boys that I would like audio adrenaline

00:38:44.300 which those two groups sound nothing but and then she said and that's how I found out I love the

00:38:49.160 Beastie Boys you know so it's like they kind of reverse engineer so it's like once you get to a

00:38:54.260 certain age it doesn't work anymore oh my god first of all laughing so hard if you like the

00:39:00.800 Beastie Boys you would like audio adrenaline so we have there's a question that I'm going to

00:39:05.100 paraphrase here because it it kind of um it's a good way to to continue this and it's from this

00:39:11.380 listener named joanne and she was talking about how in the early 2000s she saw in her experience

00:39:18.460 a lot of youth group leaders and people in the church looking to mainstream music like lifehouse

00:39:26.280 which i mentioned earlier switchfoot like she mentions the fact that switchfoot was definitely

00:39:31.940 on the walk to remember soundtrack which yes i remember yes um but she thinks that there's

00:39:37.300 something interesting going on like post 9-11 that made people search for religious meaning

00:39:42.540 in mainstream music but i'm also interested in like these bands who maybe saw that they could

00:39:49.880 have it both ways or maybe that this was also a classic proselytizing yeah component right where

00:39:57.400 you're like oh well if we hook people outside of christian music with these songs then maybe

00:40:04.880 they'll come to jesus through listening like as a gateway to the rest of the music and the rest of

00:40:10.900 i don't know faith so yeah that's a great i i think first off i definitely think there's

00:40:17.460 something to the 9-11 um connection i do think that that was a time i mean i i remember it quite

00:40:23.060 well and if you were um anywhere near adulthood it's you know it's changed all of our lives

00:40:28.800 forever but I think the best example of that I would point to would be when Creed played the

00:40:35.520 Super Bowl um in 2001 and there are some like fascinating videos of that where they're um they

00:40:45.540 were doing won't you take me higher you know and people were very distraught in that time

00:40:52.300 so it would have been like September 11th and then I think that that those types of of groups

00:40:58.360 really did strike a chord when you know when people were really searching for for meaning

00:41:04.860 I think okay I think it was a Super Bowl it might not have been the Super Bowl but I'll have to

00:41:08.500 check yeah I think it was at a Thanksgiving football game halftime show oh there's like

00:41:13.440 many games on Thanksgiving after 9-11 okay and looking back on it you can see like oh people

00:41:20.340 were really into like making you know meaning out of that time but I think the era where there were

00:41:25.740 these bands I think a lot of that has to do with the the arc of the industry itself so as corporate

00:41:31.840 interests got more involved in in contemporary Christian music it actually allowed bands that

00:41:37.140 had crossover capacity to try to get out there like they had other distribution networks so a

00:41:42.820 band that could have mass appeal the larger non-religious record labels they don't care like

00:41:51.420 they just want stuff to sell you know so if they're not going to stop anybody from connecting

00:41:56.140 with mainstream audiences a lot of bands felt that they were stymied in some in some ways by

00:42:03.460 the christian marketers because they branded once you get branded as contemporary christian it's

00:42:08.940 like the least cool thing ever so once you you know it that can be that was really frustrating

00:42:14.140 in fact there are instances i point out where bands get so frustrated a lot of them or some of

00:42:18.780 them ended up even trying like legal action like stop marketing us this way we want to be a regular

00:42:23.420 band but it's hard it's sort of the kiss of death um because because contemporary christian music had

00:42:29.540 within its branding such a parental thing i mean i think all of us know that the worst thing that

00:42:35.760 you can be is mom and dad music to a 15 year old right right yeah no that's super interesting right

00:42:44.200 that they couldn't get away from it so the best move would be to try to like not start with that

00:42:50.380 right label in the first place right right and I think you're totally right just I'm thinking about

00:42:54.720 like all of the culture that was popular in the post 9-11 world was they were using forms of

00:43:00.160 melodrama to try to make meaning and also try to make the world morally legible in some way right

00:43:05.440 So like stuff that was very, very low, very, very high, like stuff that allowed you to

00:43:10.520 feel emotions in some way, whether that was anger or glory or, you know, whatever things

00:43:19.160 like the, I think we latched on to them.

00:43:22.520 Yeah.

00:43:22.640 So some of those things too, within, you know, saying like, this is about God.

00:43:27.200 Absolutely.

00:43:27.800 Which I don't know.

00:43:28.920 Do you think that that, do you think higher is about God?

00:43:31.220 uh i i think it it's got to be some kind of spiritual something um just knowing about the

00:43:38.040 lead singer grew up in pentecostal circles yeah and so yeah i mean it's a funny era because there

00:43:44.380 are groups like um evanescence for example yeah that had a similarly epic sound with a female

00:43:51.460 lead vocalist which is kind of unusual for rock bands um but anyway there was always tension with

00:43:57.800 those groups especially and you know when you think of that about them as very young people

00:44:01.860 they're trying to like find a place in an industry and there are lots of other mechanisms that are

00:44:09.740 people want to capitalize on these groups in a lot of different ways um so there's like the

00:44:14.880 there's a youth group world like youth pastors are always looking for new material to keep the

00:44:19.840 kids in youth group keep them engaged moms are trying to make sure their kids don't listen to 1.00

00:44:24.680 sex and swearing and drugs and, you know, you know, on mainstream. And then, and then the kids

00:44:31.860 themselves, you know, for, for many kids in the late 20th century in the United States, music is

00:44:37.520 a way to express yourself and to distinguish yourself from your parents. So they're looking

00:44:43.000 to, you know, subvert a lot of that stuff. So there are a lot of different motivations going

00:44:47.160 into like how these groups are received. And for those groups, yeah, I did want to say about

00:44:53.100 9-11, there were a lot of like non-crossover bands and artists that used that opportunity

00:45:00.320 to stoke patriotism in evangelical circles. So I would say that on the flip side, the groups that

00:45:07.020 had no mainstream appeal, that were only kind of internal, it was very useful for George W. Bush

00:45:14.280 and his administration. In fact, Michael W. Smith, a huge in contemporary Christian music world,

00:45:19.540 if you don't know who he is um he performed at the republican national convention in support of

00:45:25.360 george w bush and wrote a song all about 9-11 so 9-11 in in the internal like the subculture world 0.78

00:45:33.260 was huge um and yeah it's interesting well and that's where you get into some of like the white

00:45:38.660 christian nationalism that a lot of other scholars are working on right now in terms of like there's

00:45:44.620 all this paraphernalia around like I did an interview with Kristen Kovez-Dumay about white

00:45:50.500 nationalism and Jesus and John Wayne is the name of her book which is so good and she talks a lot

00:45:56.500 about how evangelical Christianity even like co is co-opting like William Wallace from Braveheart

00:46:03.900 during this time right so there's a lot of other co-opting that is going around that is part of

00:46:09.500 this larger white nationalist project as well um okay we have a question next from christine

00:46:15.260 and melody's going to read it christian rock i loved it why was it so quirky and whose fault

00:46:20.840 is it that everyone switched to worship songs okay so melody brought up the example of a news

00:46:28.680 boys song that is called breakfast and the chorus is as follows when the toast is burned and all

00:46:36.060 the milk has turned and captain crunch is waving for well when the big one finds you may this song

00:46:41.020 remind you that they don't serve breakfast in hell this just reminds me like how sometimes

00:46:45.980 like you said like there's a little bit of a farm team for the rest of the music industry like a lot

00:46:51.240 of these songs are like oh this is the song that my friend and i made and then we practiced in our

00:46:56.240 garage like i just think you got more of that stuff that made it onto the album then in some

00:47:02.860 other for that's my explanation for the quirk if you have one too quickly before we can get into

00:47:07.940 the worship music i would love to oh yeah well steve taylor is somebody who you can thank for

00:47:12.800 the the quirk of that particular song but um i think some of the the quirkiness had to do with

00:47:19.760 um i mean you know the 90s did have a lot of sort of quirky bands just generally so i think

00:47:26.320 some of that has to do with there was sort of a i don't know kind of a silly quality to some

00:47:33.900 some rock music so i think this is the what's funny to me about that particular song is that

00:47:38.940 it's talking about actually something kind of serious if you're in those circles which is hell

00:47:43.020 um yeah so yeah he's talking about no captain crunch in hell yeah like if that's not gonna

00:47:49.080 inspire holy living i don't know what will but yeah so just making like this silly stuff part

00:47:54.760 of the conversation too like i can see my brother like really liking that totally not anymore but

00:48:00.460 when he was like 10 um and then the worship song i didn't even think about this until i read this

00:48:07.720 question i was like oh my gosh right around 2001 2002 when i was a camp counselor suddenly all of

00:48:16.140 the new cds that we were selling at camp were all of the like live worship things right and there

00:48:22.300 was in some ways it was brilliant right because the songs that you were singing during worship

00:48:27.120 were also the songs that were available for these cds but it felt like it cannibalized

00:48:32.960 this entire quirky industry yeah so what happened there oh gosh okay i'm gonna try and do it

00:48:38.960 i go into it in some detail in the book but i'll try and give like the the shortest version of that

00:48:43.700 and one i think has to do with how people worship now so yeah americans worship less often in larger

00:48:51.660 congregation statistically, especially evangelicals, because evangelicals dominate the megachurch

00:48:56.860 scene. So one thing that really damaged CCM was losing medium-sized churches, because medium-sized

00:49:04.240 churches were a part of like a development network. So if you were a band, you play small

00:49:08.260 churches and coffee shops first, and maybe youth groups, and then you move up to medium-sized

00:49:11.880 churches. And then the aim is to get into those megachurches, because that's where you could

00:49:15.340 connect with more fans and actually sell merchandise and stuff like that. So the medium-sized church

00:49:20.240 disappearing which they are disappearing really quickly leaves it's a hole in the development

00:49:25.580 network so you can't like get a band to go the other thing about mega churches is they have

00:49:30.140 incredible resources like if you see if you look at um kind of the it churches right now maverick

00:49:35.620 or not maverick city they're not a church but elevation church but if you look at maverick

00:49:39.860 city's music videos which are very like set in a churchy kind of they can go toe-to-toe with

00:49:44.920 almost any mainstream like production musicality they're killing it so like they don't need

00:49:51.260 an external band to come and give them a show right they're creating like really compelling

00:49:57.600 stadium rock concerts um as worship so some of that is just that a lot of it also has to do with

00:50:05.260 um the the i think the internet is mainly responsible because young people could very

00:50:13.320 easily get around their parents and could find music that that they wanted to listen to that

00:50:20.220 wasn't necessarily mainstream but also the artists themselves it came to feel less attractive to try

00:50:28.020 to like make it in that industry if you're a band like switchfoot they had mainstream success like

00:50:33.580 they yeah um so there are a lot of other reasons um but and some of it has to do with like the

00:50:39.400 fragmenting of evangelicalism just generally like there are um because there are there are artists

00:50:44.820 who are connecting with people just period you know they but they don't need those networks to

00:50:49.960 do it they can develop an audience through spotify or youtube or tiktok and they don't need the kind

00:50:58.180 of structure that was contemporary christian music so one way of looking at it is that worship

00:51:03.100 music is sort of what's left of the business like the in-house powerhouse yeah yeah it's like it

00:51:08.460 starts in churches it kind of goes out into mainstream it ends up kind of back under the

00:51:13.880 purview of of churches um and then another way of looking at it is that worship music is also

00:51:21.140 transnational so a lot of contemporary christian music if you look at the moral imperatives a lot

00:51:26.140 of it's domestic they're like this is the kind of country we want this is these are the kind of

00:51:30.220 citizens we want and worship music and it can be used in for a variety of political causes i talk

00:51:35.580 about a few there so it can be politicized it is politicized but it's also not exclusively

00:51:41.980 American there are people who are like trading songs all over the world Australia Brazil Guatemala

00:51:46.860 Singapore you know like it's going all over the place and so in our global economic world it sort

00:51:54.360 of makes sense that that's the industry that survives I don't know if that that's probably

00:51:58.560 too much but that's what I know no no I could honestly talk about this for another hour but

00:52:03.920 But for now, paid subscribers, you get to stick around for advice time.

00:52:09.220 Leah's going to help me answer a question about telling people that your faith has changed.

00:52:12.780 Oh, gosh.

00:52:13.740 I know.

00:52:14.580 I cannot tell you what a pleasure this has been.

00:52:17.160 I've been looking forward to this conversation.

00:52:20.000 I am just really honored.

00:52:21.380 Thank you.

00:52:21.760 The book is so good.

00:52:23.220 And I really think people, whatever their relationship is to this music, will find it

00:52:27.540 really fascinating.

00:52:28.900 It's accessible in so many different ways.

00:52:31.260 so if people want to find more of you on the internet where can they find you they can find 1.00

00:52:35.620 me at drleahpain.com which I only use that because there is another l-e-a-h-p-a-y-n-e

00:52:41.820 already taken so d-r-h on most social media platforms and I'd love to connect with people

00:52:47.900 I love hearing their stories and I have to tell you that I'm a big fan of your work and I called

00:52:51.560 my friend Erica my best friend who we talk to each other all the time and I was like guess who

00:52:56.440 I'm talking to today so from Erica and I we we love your work we appreciate it thank you

00:53:01.240 so much. This was so great. And everyone, the book is God gave rock and roll to you. And if

00:53:07.600 you want to buy it at bookshop.org, use promo code culture to get 10% off.

00:53:16.720 Thanks for listening to the culture study podcast. Be sure to subscribe wherever you

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00:54:15.140 Culture Study Podcast is produced by me, Anne Helen Peterson, and Melody Rowell. Our music is

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00:54:25.980 and the show at Culture Study Pod.

Culture Study Podcast - May 08, 2024

How Christian Rock Fed the Culture Wars

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