On my recent mega-thrift run, I picked up a particular CD from a thrift shop. The thrift shop had one of those CD sections where everything was religious music. The CD caught my eye because the title was “Portraits in Synthesis” and the cover was very new-agey, although the back design was a little chaotic. The CD seemed like it would be a nice new-age synthesizer instrumental album, so I spent a couple bucks and got it.
When I got home, with my 19 other CDs, I took a better look at the back and saw the tracks were named all… uncomfortable names. Things like, “Fairest Lord Jesus”, and “Lord Be Glorified / Spirit Song”, and the rest were similar. Of course my reaction was, “Goddamn it. This is a religious album.” And I left it on the kitchen table while I cleaned up and cataloged my other finds.
The next day, I saw the disc sitting on the counter and picked up it again. I read more of the back and realized, yes, it was a synth album. It just had weird song titles. I looked inside the booklet and there were no lyrics, so, yes, it’s instrumental. What’s the deal with these titles?
I researched the label the album was published under and learned that it was a subsidiary of a religious music label. This new child label was made to take advantage of the growing “new age” music popularity of the 80’s. How weird. When I think new-age, I actually think of “anti-religion”, not in any evil way, but you know, new-age spirituality.
Think of the issues that come up when Christian music lovers can’t listen to new-age music because it conflicts with their personal beliefs. “I can’t listen to this because it’s new-age, and that involves crystals and tantra and whatever a chakra is!” Well, music finds a way, right? We’ll publish the same kind of music, but we’ll use religious titles that invoke the names Lord and Jesus and then there’s no moral conflict! What a genius idea! It’s genius, but it’s sad, too. Music doesn’t have any religious affiliation. It’s agnostic. And the sad part is that agnosticism isn’t good enough for devout believers. If it doesn’t fully walk the walk and talk the talk, it’s evil.
I was testing out my car stereo after doing some work on it and the only radio station I could pick up was the local religious station. Go figure, huh? And some woman had called in to talk to the radio host and explain how she loved the station and how it gave her whole house a worshipping feel all the time. That’s what you want your whole life to be? Like you’re in church all day?
But I try to keep in mind the lyrics from NOFX’s Happy Guy, from Punk In Drublic (Something the devout would never hear anyway):
Don’t try to judge him, his theologian ideal
His hopes may be false but his happiness is real
Don’t try to judge him, he’s just a man
Was the album any good?
It actually is. And I didn’t make the point in my post that I’m not totally against religious music. I listen to Stryper, which is kind of tame, and I also listen to Petra, which has some serious god-groveling lyrics, but they rock pretty hard, so that makes up for it.