I’m often asked why I pre­fer, at core, “Chris­t­ian” music. Most of the time I can’t explain it past the fact that it, for the most part, has more pas­sion in it… and the pas­sion is usu­ally directed in the right direc­tion. Some peo­ple are just so freak­ing tal­ented that when their pas­sion is directed towards the music itself, sex, drugs, or the seem­ingly never-ending list of the cliche Chris­t­ian “no no’s”, it just ruins it for me.

The weird line is the one that some indie bands walk. I lis­ten to dozens of indie bands that have Chris­t­ian roots. It’s amaz­ing to me, how­ever, when I hear that one of those bands use get­ting extremely wasted and get­ting high as a means for “inspi­ra­tion.” In fact, I did find out that one of the bands that I really respect. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not walk­ing around with my nose up in the air call­ing any­one who does any­thing a hell-destined sin­ner, but to me writ­ing music is some­thing that comes from the heart and soul.

I am a per­son who lis­tens to a song as a seri­ous peace of art­work, and I mean that in the most lit­eral way pos­si­ble. I guess I tend to stick with Chris­t­ian music because it’s safe… per­haps that makes me closed-minded.

When I think of the most amaz­ing song I’ve ever heard, I think “Praises” by news­boys, and I’m not hes­i­tant to admit it. I also think “Pres­ence (My Heart’s Desire)” by news­boys, “Fall Apart” by Cas­tle­door… songs that just bleed cre­ativ­ity, wor­ship, and trans­parency. With­out pas­sion­ate music, life would be meaningless.

As a side note, I’ve revis­ited the news­boys album Devo­tion after writ­ing this post and dis­cov­ered a new aspect of the album. The over­all qual­ity of the album is ques­tion­able if you go into it with out­side thoughts, how­ever if you lis­ten to tracks like “Pres­ence”, Strong Tower”, “The Orphan”, and “When the Tears Fall” (specif­i­cally the end of that song… amazing).