Number 5 Most Overrated Musical Act of All Time: "Christian" "Music"--The Entire Sub-Genre

There are philosophical problems as well as aesthetic ones here. By creating a category of “Christian music,” marketers helped to further ghettoize American Christians from the broader culture, and helped to create a permanently fundamentalist mindset that abhors art and only consumes product. The idea that music must be didactic is a particularly odious, Hegelian, utilitarian idea that should be locked in a vault with all Chris Tomlin master tapes and set on fire. Though they weren’t the only ones, the band Stryper was one of the biggest early offenders in the genre. Worse than the “We can ape legitimate rock and roll” perspective was the spandex and hair. For whatever reason, Stryper did not choose to copy Hendrix, Zeppelin, Clapton, or any other of the wildly successful actual creators of music known to the time. Instead, they went the Ratt-Poison route, which was the laughingstock of the music world pretty much immediately. So not only were they derivative—they were derivative of the worst that marketing departments could offer. The rest of CCM has traveled this well-worn route: “We can look and sound like these guys over here, but what we do is practical, utilitarian and didactic! Bonus!” The gauzy, hagiographic haze of nostalgia for 80s derivations does not add one iota of quality to any of these acts.

There is no new “genre” here; it’s pop music, plain and simple. Regardless of whether it’s “hard,” “soft,” or (particularly odious) “praise and worship,” CCM is a sub-genre, and not a particularly good one.  It is already well-documented how this sub-genre is anything but “Christian,” lacking as it does theological depth and truly beautiful writing, and it’s certainly not “music.” Anyone who thinks God likes this stuff obviously hasn’t spent much time considering the significance of the fact that God is the Original and Supreme Artist—the One Who created something “good” and “beautiful.” It was The Other Guy who could only make cheap knock-offs. Like all overrated musical acts, CCM barely plays any music at all. They are formulaic and centered on style;  they can barely spell “substance,” but hundreds of thousands of evangelical kids have always felt that they weren’t being left out of the cultural sphere of the US because of them. An aesthetic ghetto has formed, and these kids are too happy to be part of it. But the acts themselves are a triumph of niche marketing, rather than artistic excellence. For most of the entire half-century they’ve pranced across stages, poor Larry Norman was no doubt face-palming himself at the behemoth he inadvertently created.

Overratedness Rating: 6/5 John Mayers