Monday, February 14, 2005

The CCM thing

I have been listening to CCM (in addition to mainstream music) for almost as long as the genre has been around as have many of you. I have been disaffected recently by the state of the industry and this morning things got worse for me. There is a new show called Christian Music Makeover and it has got me thinking of many things. Some of my thoughts were echoed in the following articles. The first is about CCM Makeover, the second about the state of the industry and the third is the official site of CCM Makeover that actually almost made me feel worse than the critical pieces.

James Stewart's blog that started this thinking for me

Kate Bomwan's article about the state of CCM

Christian music makeover

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am not at all surprised with this crap. CCM (heavy on the lack of the second C part) is always trying to match the secular world's marketing, looks, and sounds. I quit listening to the C"C"M radio stations about 12 years ago. Personally I feel that Christians should be setting the standards, not trying to emulate the secular world's.

Anonymous said...

Bob, I think that you nailed this very well - this 'makeover' thing is a great summary of the current state of CCM - rotten. Not that 'Daniel's Window' do not care for the the ministry they have or the gospel they preach, indeed they do seem to care deeply. But when an industry tells them, and by extension anyone else who wants to be a CCM artist, that you must be thin and beautiful, have a polished/coached live show, and kowtow to a god of financial success to make it big in the CCM world, maybe it's time to blow up the CCM machine and start over.
Plus the entire reasoning behind this - unstated but true - that we have to copy what is sucessful in the secular market place is a pile of crap. Christian artist should be MAKING trends, not forced to follow them one or two years too late (which is the current CCM model).

Anonymous said...

I listen to very little mainstream CCM stuff although my wife likes to listen some of it. My kidz do get caught up in the "look" of it and that is understandable.

I don't like these reality shows and as Dave said, Christians should not be copying the world

Anonymous said...

I guess I should have I.D.'d myself in that last post. I'm Stybba from Chi-town.

bethany said...

I think James Steward has the right idea. How can anyone have a "spiritual makeover" on national television? Also, the lack of focus on MUSIC is disturbing.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for chipping in to the debate. Just to clarify, it turns out that Christian Music Makeover is a web-based entity rather than a 'real' TV show. The press release was a little misleading on that. They're hoping to get a TV special at some point... *sigh*