Church Hopping

I am in no way in touch with the latest and greatest in “Christian” music anymore. There was a time when I feel I knew what was going on. I think I drifted away from it due to the declining quality (though maybe I’m just backsliding in morality). There is a bizarre trend that is going on in “Christian” music that I have never seen in any other genre or industry that I know of.

Why are artist covering other people’s songs so frequently? And I don’t just mean a cover of a hymn or bringing some classic song into relevance. I am talking about currently popular songs that are just getting sung by another artist. I have never seen this in any other genre of music. Can you imagine if Fergie covered a song off of Mariah Carey’s brand new album? It sounds weird but this is happening in “Christian” music. The only close thing I can think of in other genres is maybe when a Weird Al parody is on the charts at the same time as the original.

The song “Beautiful One” was written by Tim Hughes and released on an album of his. Then it was covered and released by Jeremy Camp and By The Tree with in a year of each other. I’ve heard similar things with the songs “Everlasting God” and “How Great is our God”.

I can understand using these songs in leading worship, but releasing them on an album confuses me. I have thought about complaining because it makes Christian artists seem lazy or unoriginal. And I could talk about how there should be plenty of inspiration to write songs when the topic is an infinite God. But really I just think this thing is bizarre.