For Father's Day they gave me two albums I have been wanting, one of which is already reviewed on this blog and the other which will be soon. The first is My One & Only Thrill
by Melody Gardot and the second is Crazy Love
by Michael Buble'. While Melody is still quite a way off from being even tolerated by them they have suddenly developed a tolerance for Buble' and in fact have even confessed to liking some of his songs. There favorite is "I just haven't met you yet," which is a Buble' original, but equally they like "All of Me," "Your nobody 'til somebody loves you," and a few other Jazz standards from ages past. This confession brought joy and hope to my heart and I immediately went out and purchased a Best of Dean Martin album (Best Of: Green Series
) to let them here some of these songs done by one of the greats. For them, the jury is still out on Dean, but for me, I had forgotten how much I love listening to Dean; not only is his voice pure, rich and resonate, but he was just cool! Bouncing between these eras of music got me to thinking about the nature and evolution of music.As I share this music with my children, Michael Buble' has become a sort of bridge between the past and the present upon which I have been standing looking at the evolution of music and frankly being a bit sad but still finding a glimmer of hope. Now when I say the evolution of music I am not talking about a history of music from its very origins, I am focusing on say the last eighty years. From the thirties and song writers like Hoagy Carmichael to today and personalities like Lady GaGa. That very sentence begins to highlight one of the primary ways music has changed. In so many ways music has ceased to be about the music and it has become about the personalities of the performers. No longer do you need vocal purity or a disciplined gift on an instrument, now a voice synthesizer and a computer mixing program can make you famous if you choose to behave a little or a lot eccentrically.
Let us begin this discussion with terminology and an observation that came to me listening to Crazy Love. In the thirties, forties, fifties and early sixties the music industry had "standards," songs that most famous artists would perform and even record. The songs weren't connected to a person, a gender or even a race they were songs that stood on their own merit. Songs like "All of Me," or "Georgia on my Mind." The performances were about doing vocal and instrumental justice to that great song. As evidence of this, the next time you are in a music store pick up albums by Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald and Billy Holiday and look how often you find the same songs recorded on each of their albums. Beginning in earnest in the mid to late sixties the nature of the music begins to change. No longer does a song stand alone, it becomes connected with a certain artist. No longer does someone different from the original performer record a "standard," they are now recording a "cover" of the original artist's song. No longer does a band in a club perform "standards" they are now referred to as "cover" bands because they are performing other artists' music. The songs become proprietary and are commodities to be traded rather than great art to be shared. The epitome of this reality is probably the day that Michael Jackson bought the rights to all of The Beatles's music, cutting off Paul McCartney from some of the very songs that HE WROTE!
Even the nature of the performers has changed. I have already mentioned how no longer is it necessary to have an incredible voice to be a performer, but there are other things that have changed as well. I was hanging out with a pastor buddy of mine the other day who also enjoys Buble' and he was commenting on how "sharp" he always looked in his suit coat and tie when he is on stage. It isn't the flamboyancy of an Elton John, the rebelliousness of an Ozzy Osborne, or the provocativeness of a Lady GaGa; it is elegant, yet simple. He dresses in a manner that makes him look good, but doesn't distract from his performance. This is one of those places that Michael Buble' is a bridge. He dresses like the artists of old that performed standards. Sinatra and Martin always in a tux, Ella and Billy always in some elegant gown. Dressing to impress but never dressing for the discussion about their performance afterward to be more about what they wore rather than what they sung. I notice that if you peruse pop-culture blogs and sites, you read much more about what artists are wearing or how they are behaving rather than the music itself. We pay much more attention to a good scandal than we ever do to a great vocal performance. Look at the press Sting got by doing a private concert for a controversial dictator versus the amount of press he gets for his current tour with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
The same friend that made the comment about Buble' also made the comment that "he prefers country music lately because it is the last bastion of real musicians," and I have to admit that he is right. Where do you turn to find skilled and talented musicians anymore in main stream music and by that I don't really mean Jazz or Classical? You turn to country music. Anymore, musical talent is really not required; a good ear, a computer and a keyboard can create you a song that gets an incredible amount of airplay. We seem to have entered an age where the base line is more important than the melody line or even the lyrics. If it has a good beat that I can bob my head to then it is "good" music and it is even better if it is performed by a controversial personality in a provocative dress behaving as if they are the center of the universe. It is amazing to think that the "music" industry has ceased to be about the music and has become more about the "entertainment."
The question that this raises is a bit disturbing, "Is this shift in the music industry a critique of the industry and the artists or is it a critique of us, the listeners and fans?" As an idealist I would like to blame the artists, but I am a dyed in the wool capitalist and as such I have to accept the truth of the latter. What is playing on the radio is a critique and commentary on us the listeners. They are playing what we want to hear, they are behaving and dressing in ways that we will pay to watch. The law of supply and demand, they are giving us what we want and that begins to frighten me a little. Where is that truth leading us as humanity? Music used to be something that could truly stir our souls, when Dean Martin sings the first line of "Return to Me," tingles go up your spine and you get a shiver because your soul has just been moved. Have our souls become empty and hollow to the point that we are more concerned with being entertained than with having our souls moved? Are we no longer concerned about the substance of things as long as the appearance gets our attention?
Typing that last sentence reminds me of Jesus' confrontation with the Pharisees where He tells them that they are just a bunch of white washed tombs. Pretty on the outside but void on the inside of anything other than smelly, rotting old bones. Jesus could have been saying, "Yes, you are putting on a good show, but what about your souls? You look good but when was the last time your souls were moved with passion or compassion? You talk in ways that gets people's attention but when was the last time your words, the substance of your message, moved somebody to want to know more about Adonai?" Trading substance for image, our souls for our immediate comfort and joy, our standards for a flash-in-the-pan is nothing new. It is the very problem Jesus faced and it is raring up again today not just in the music industry but in church as well.
The music industry has become about the personalities rather than the content and substance of music, but that is equally true of the mainstream church. We know who Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland and Beth Moore are to name just a few, but do we really know what they believe? Yes they are entertaining, but do we know or understand or even care about the theology behind what they are communicating? I heard Joel Osteen preach one time about a man who became afraid when his wife got cancer. Osteen's message was about fear and the power of our thoughts, words and attitudes and in the context of telling this story he described warning the man about these fearful thoughts about his wife dying and her subsequent death and then he made this statement as close as I can remember, "I don't know the theology of it, but I do know this, this man's fears came upon him and his fears killed his wife!" Seriously, did this man preaching to an audience of more than 20,000 just tell them that because a man was afraid of his wife dying with cancer that his fears killed her? Yes, he did and what is worse, the audience applauded. The story was told in an entertaining way, he is a compelling communicator and he is incredibly popular, but to clap for a statement like that tells me that we seem to have lost our ability to think theologically!
Is it the case that we have become so much about image and personality that we can no longer think through the theological progression of statements like that. Recently Hal Lindsey commenting on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico commented that this was God's punishment on the United States for Barack Obama's "mishandling" of relations with Israel. So are we to believe that the same God who has called us into relationship with Jesus Christ to be saved, to be called Children of God, to be blessed by the same blessing that was upon Abraham is now sending a plague upon all the people of the Gulf Coast who depend upon the Gulf of Mexico for the livelihood, many of whom are very devout Christians and Jews and who have nothing to do with the international policy decisions of the United States? No we are not to believe that because it is patently false! Biblically it doesn't jive, but equally theologically it does not jive. On the surface the image of the statement is compelling but the substance of it is rooted in bad theology. It is time for us to start to turn away from image and back to substance.
It is time for us to start worrying about moving souls rather than making bodies look good. It is time that we stop sitting around waiting to be spoon fed, not caring about what we are eating as long as we are being fed, and start thinking theologically for ourselves. This doesn't mean that we shift to a "just me and Jesus" point of view, it means that we start thinking through the consequences of theological statements and discuss them in Christian community so we can reject that which is only about image and attention rather than about substance. The Christian faith is exclusively about substance and depth. There is a version being peddled today that is theologically shallow and which will not stand up when the storms of life come. We need to begin to focus on those deeper theological roots; we need to listen to the call of Jesus through the performance of Dean Martin as he sings "Return to Me." Not in a moralistic return to the Christian roots of our country way, but in a way that recaptures His passion for moving souls.
There is hope. David Foster one of the greatest record producers and artists of the last thirty years was very reluctant to produce and distribute Michael Buble's first album because he didn't know how to market that kind of music. Ultimately he did and Buble's albums continue to dominate the charts and he has even sold out Madison Square Gardens for a concert. Buble' music is about substance, it is about soul moving, it is not about personality or image and people are reconnecting with it. My children are evidence of that as the same children that rock out to "Poker Face," find some joy and peace in "All of Me." If we can see this kind of thing happen in the soulless industryvaccuum that has become the music industry I am confident that we can find it in the church. So tonight when you are done reading this, pull out your Bible and your newspaper and put on a Martin or Sinatra or Ella or Armstrong album and let your soul be moved as you read current events and then think about them theologically. Think about what a particular position or statement means about God if it is true. Spend an evening in the soul moving joy of substance and set aside image for just a little while.
Your brother in Christ,
Faron
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