I don't really like Christian music.
My parents were new to faith when I was a kid and were very conservative and naive, so much so that they've burned everything I had that was from Disney during the subliminal message craze. So only Christian music in the house. As such i never really cared about music. The church music never did anything to me. But when I was in 8th grade, I had a group work for English class (I'm from Brazil), in which we had to pick a song, and make new lyrics for it, and then play/sing it later. My friend suggested Trouble from Coldplay, and listening to their other stuff it was the first time I enjoyed music. He showed me later the band Red (a Christian hardcore band) which I loved and made me search for more like that. When searching for new music I always checked if they were Christian. But as time went on, I cared less about that. I saw Coldplay lyrics and they were really nice, and not Christian, so why would it matter. Eventually I cared less and less about lyrics. Then I discovered the Japanese music thread here around the time I decided to learn Japanese and it was then when I actually fell in love with music. I discovered many new genres. And this sealed the deal for me. I went from only Christian music, to actively disliking it.
There are may reasons. Listening to Japanese music I've seen so many creative stuff. Stuff that I never even imagined. From tricot to Kinoko Teikoku, from Gesu no Kiwami Otome to Ling Toshite Shigure, from indigo la End to Perfume. And then there are stuff like BABYMETAL that are extremely novel and creative even in "secular" music. It made the flaws in Christian music even more apparent. There's a lack of diversity, a lack of creativity. The "holy trinity" of christian music is Hardcore/Metal, Rap/Hip-hop and the Worship/Pop-Rock/Singer-Songwriter that I like to call Gospel (which are stuff like Hillsong). There's nothing after that. The day I see krautrock, drone, lowercase, avant garde, shoegaze, dream pop, noise, dark ambient, free jazz, or other genres Christian music, I'm going to be in awe. Aside from that, I fell that, especially in the "Gospel" genre, which it's what is often played at the church, lyrics are pretty mediocre at best.
This video show pretty well what I dislike (and the fact that the song at the end really sounds like a real song it's solid). The only Christian band that I like is Emery. Their lyrics are great, as they talk about life, instead of "God is good. Repeat 30 times". They have songs that talk about the relationship with God, but they also have songs that have nothing to do with it (Like Piggy Bank Lies that is about finding that a girl is cheating on you). And there's also the fact that I don't think segregating Christian stuff from the rest is good, but oh well.
I want to like Christian music. I want to listen to a song that talks about the struggles one find when tying to live a "Christian" live and relate to it. But I never found that. For example, right now I'm struggling with trying to find my place in the "church culture". I'm not really going to church and I don't really feel like I belong for a multitude of reasons, but I'm trying to understand what I should do. But I never listened to a song that talks about struggling with going to church, and even if I did it would probably not talk about the reasons that I do.
