Andrew Speaks/Types

I’m not sure if I’ve talked about this or not, but if I have, forgive me. I’ve just been thinking about it a lot lately. I think that Chrisitan music shouldn’t be:

How great is our God,
sing with me
How great is our God,
and all will see
How great, How great
Is our God

That is incredibly boring. No one feels that way all of the time. Christians and even unsaved souls are constantly struggling in their walk of life and their relationship with God. How many times do we sing along just because the words are on some projector screen in front of us? How many of these songs do you think are written just because the words rhyme? If you were to ask me, I would guess that quite a few were.

Brand New is a different kind of band. They used to be a cookie cutter emo band that wrote some catchy tunes ad probably shed a few tears along the way. But their singer, Jesse Lacey, was raised as a Christian (I think) and lost his faith, but rededicated his life somewhere in between the release of Deja Entendu and their last album, The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me. (For the record, I have not spoken to Jesse Lacey, I’m getting my information from the context of the band’s lyrics, so I may be a bit off on some things)

The rest of the band, as far as I know, are not Christian, nor is Brand New considered by anyone to be a Christian band, so Jesse Lacey doesn’t have to write songs like How Great Is Our God. How much flack do you think Chris Tomlin would get if he wrote a song with lyrics like:

“And in the choir I saw our sad Messiah.
He was bored and tired of my laments.
He said, ‘I died for you one time, but never again’”

He’d get eaten alive. Jesse can say just what’s on his mind. He talks about taboo things, like: are there sins that are unforgivable? And his hatred of people who cram the bible down your throat. And losing your faith. It may sound sacreligious to you, but I think that this is how Christian music should be.

We can still have How Great Is Our God, but that’s praise music. Christian music needs to be about our honest to goodness relationship with God, just like a good portion rock music is about relationships between family, friends, and significant others.

Apart from the lyrical value of The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me, the music is also great. This is the pinnacle of emo. This is probably the only true emo band I listen to, because honestly I find it pretty boring for the most part. Brand New is not boring. I would reccomend it to anyone who is bored of the genre of emo or anyone who is bored of praise music. This would probably make it into my top 5 albums of all time. In my opinion, it is a perfect album.