I'm going to Worship Central on Saturday.
I can't wait!
Thursday 13 March 2008
Saturday 8 March 2008
New Song Words...
I was having an interesting discussion with a friend of mine last night on the telephone. We are both worship leaders in different churches and we both write songs. I was talking with Tim M about new songs I had written and about how some of my words have been referred to as "Boxallisms" (quote courtesy of Mark Robins!), i.e. I use words which may not be in every day use, such as "travesty" and, my all time favourite, "antonym".
The discussion we had went down the lines of: "When do we know we've reached the point in writing where the lyrics go beyond stretching people's minds and vocabulary and into the realms of confusion?"
I remember when I was about 14-15 years old I was reading through some of the hymns in "Hymns ancient and modern" (the irony of the title never ceases to amaze me!) and found that there were several hymns where I did not understand half the lyrics, yet these hymns are still considered great enough to be included in one of the most popular traditional hymn books.
There does seem to be a "traditional" set of words which we worship leaders seem to stick to, and I'm not talking simply of biblical language or simplicity of language. I am yet to see a worship song which includes modern words which we use in everyday speech. We're happy to sing about writing God a letter, yet emails do not get mentioned. We're happy to soar like an eagle, but aeroplanes are out of the question! (obviously I am half joking here, but you get my point!) The only songs that seem to mention modern things are children's songs, yet we can all relate to Him being higher than a skyscraper or deeper than a submarine!
The question is: Have we narrowed down our acceptable list of words to a point where before too long more and more phrases will become cliched? Should we, as songwriters, work on expanding not only our musical abilities but also our vocabulary and command of language, in order to add new perspective/insight to what we sing, or is that simply expecting too much from the people who we would like to be singing our songs?
I don't have an answer.
The discussion we had went down the lines of: "When do we know we've reached the point in writing where the lyrics go beyond stretching people's minds and vocabulary and into the realms of confusion?"
I remember when I was about 14-15 years old I was reading through some of the hymns in "Hymns ancient and modern" (the irony of the title never ceases to amaze me!) and found that there were several hymns where I did not understand half the lyrics, yet these hymns are still considered great enough to be included in one of the most popular traditional hymn books.
There does seem to be a "traditional" set of words which we worship leaders seem to stick to, and I'm not talking simply of biblical language or simplicity of language. I am yet to see a worship song which includes modern words which we use in everyday speech. We're happy to sing about writing God a letter, yet emails do not get mentioned. We're happy to soar like an eagle, but aeroplanes are out of the question! (obviously I am half joking here, but you get my point!) The only songs that seem to mention modern things are children's songs, yet we can all relate to Him being higher than a skyscraper or deeper than a submarine!
The question is: Have we narrowed down our acceptable list of words to a point where before too long more and more phrases will become cliched? Should we, as songwriters, work on expanding not only our musical abilities but also our vocabulary and command of language, in order to add new perspective/insight to what we sing, or is that simply expecting too much from the people who we would like to be singing our songs?
I don't have an answer.
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