If you're not following the hip part of the Christian blogosphere (I hate that word.), the part that includes coffee-drinking, bescarved, Toms-wearing, kinder, young evangelicals, then you may be unaware that Derek Webb has pissed off the fundies and the socially backward again. Derek Webb, once upon a time a member of Christian soft rock/pseudo-folk band Caedmon's Call, has a new song and video called What Matters More. You can see the video and read the "explicit" lyrics here. The song is very much a post-Radiohead, electronic mix, with some guy channeling Jonny Greenwood, and it is perhaps the best thing Webb has done, at least sonically. Then there are the lyrics.
Webb tries to comisserate with non-Christians in the song's first stanza, taking Christians to task for not following the Golden Rule and caricaturing gays and other opponents. The stanza that has some parts of the church angry includes this line: "Meanwhile we sit just like we don't give a shit About 50,000 people who are dyin'today." Now, aside from the fact that he simply stole the idea from Tony Campolo, who worked this schtick at least 20 years ago, the lyrics are just goofy. Webb has always had a penchant for bizarre turns of phrase, a habit that makes his music too self-serious, as if Webb is well aware that thousands of young Christian beatniks think of him as a musical prophet. To his credit, Webb has used the prophet's mantle to rail against the people of God, not the sinners who have yet to call out for our salvation. But it's a game that has grown too tired and too cliche.
Message music is okay in small doses. This is why "secular" music will always consistently outsell Christian music and why Christian music will find it nearly impossible to find wide acceptance on non-Christian radio. (I don't think it's an issue of mediocrity. If it was, Miley Cyrus wouldn't be a star.) With rare exceptions, non-Christian artists don't think of their role as a ministry or a calling. They don't weigh their lyrics down with messages about who ought to do what or believe what. Green Day managed a few message songs on American Idiot, and that is consistent with the role of punk music. But Green Day didn't become the biggest punk band in the world singing about politics all the time: they managed the occasional hymn to masturbation and teen angst as well. Music is expressive and only occasionally proscriptive. Webb should keep that in mind.
Secondary to that, Webb had to know his song was going to provoke a controversy because of his use of "shit." Now, I don't give a shit about profanity. Doesn't trouble me in the least. I'm even pretty sure that all the prohibitions in the Bible about corrupt communication have to do with things like gossip, slander, lying, and caricaturing, not profanity. Webb laments that the church is ignoring people who are starving because they are chasing after the wind in the form of petty grievances. And to show how angry he is about it, he creates one of these teapot tempests. And that is supposed to help how? Any Christian artist who has been around the business more than an hour knows you can't use profanity in Christian music. There simply is no pay-off. Whatever cause you hoped to advance will be lost in the shitstorm of vanguard traditionalists arguing with the terminally hip counterculturalists about whether or not to use sin to draw attention to the cause de jour. Webb knows his song will increase interest in his music, but unless he's the dumbest musician on earth, he also had to know it wouldn't help his cause. Congratulations, Derek. Self-promoting, wild-eyed, faux righteousness just murdered one of your best pieces of work.
