The first time I heard of Vicky Beeching was probably around 1999/2000, when she was part of some Vineyard UK recordings both as a songwriter and worship leader. In 2003 she led worship at the Soul Survivor festival and I had the privilege to be there when she helped out on the guitar in the band arrangement workshop. The song we were arranging back then was none other than “Yesterday, Today & Forever”, which was also the first track on her “Shelter” EP that came out the same year.
Now it’s three years later and Vicky has released a full album featuring 11 songs and the title track is, guess what… “Yesterday, Today & Forever”. At first I was a bit disappointed because I had expected it to be full of new songs, but instead she chose to mostly re-record songs that I already knew from the Vineyard recordings and “Shelter”. What an odd decision for a debut album, I thought… until I actually put it into my CD player and started to listen. Now I think I understand. The Vineyard recording of her early days were dominated by… well, Vineyard sound. “Shelter” was a bit of an unpolished gem… lots of potential, but a bit rough around the edges. But now, Vicky has found her own style and been able to record an entire CD of her songs the way they were always meant to be. And the result are stunning new versions of songs I thought I knew so well that there could only be one way to play them.
I really love the way the lyrics play an important role – and what powerful lyrics they are. Unlike many other modern worship CDs, the music doesn’t drown out the lyrics and turn them into a marginality. It feels like first there we only words and the music was created to emphasize them, give them wings, carry them further. Very “God-centered” lyrics, talking about His majesty and mystery… a refreshing change from many “me-centered” worship songs that are published today.
And don’t ever come and tell me that “girls can’t rock” or lead worship – because Vicky can do both and she does it in a very gentle, yet powerful way. It never feels like “too much” and yet it gets your feet moving and your hands clapping before it takes you away to another moment of deep adoration. This would be the perfect worship album, except for one glitch – the re-recording of “Created”, which has lost all the power that it had on “Shelter” and apparently about half the chords with it. But the great songs more than make up for that – the title track itself, “Call to Worship”, “Captivated”, only to name a few. Definitely an album that I will still be listening and singing along to a couple of years from now and one that shouldn’t be missing from any decent worship CD collection.
Technorati : Survivor, Vicky Beeching, Vineyard, christian, music, review, worship
Those of you who have been coming to this site regularly and waiting for it to launch as a christian lyrics search site may be wondering why it has now launched as a blog instead. I thought that I owe you a bit of an explanation and it’s probably best done by having a look at the history of ccmlyrics.com.
Continue reading ‘A little bit of history’
The first ever song I want to look at on this site is “What if His people prayed?” by Casting Crowns. It’s a song that I can’t really get out of my head ever since I first listened to it more than a year ago. And that’s not just because I like the melody and it’s kind of a “catchy” song to sing along to. Casting Crowns just have a way of stating the inconvenient truths about our christian lives that really catches me off-guard. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown so used to two kinds of songs recorded by christian artists: those that praise God for all the good things that happen (and believe me, I’m all for that) and those that praise God “in the storm”, to quote from another Casting Crowns song that I’m sure I will write about one day.
But there seems to be a noticeable lack of songs that take an in-depth look at the christian ghettos that we often transform our churches into and point out that that’s not what God has called us to do. Now, there would be many ways to do just that and a lot of them would probably cause me to switch the radio off or skip to the next track on the CD… but not this one.
Let’s just have a look at how brilliantly the lyrics of the song convey the message. It all starts with an excellent question: “What if…?”. And oh, the slight irony in the question: “What if the armies of the Lord picked up and dusted off their swords?” – that’s when I immediately start picturing myself as a warrior of God, with a sword around my waist (you know, the metaphorical sword… I don’t believe in going on actual crusades these days), but it’s an old and rusty sword that I haven’t used in so many years. And suddenly it’s not something that “the church” should do, not something that “we” should be doing – it’s personal, it’s about me…
There are a lot more “what if?” questions in there – but it all culminates in the one question that is the title of the song: “What if His people prayed?”. Or, more to the point, what if, instead of just being sad about things that go wrong in this world, instead of complaining and moaning, instead of searching for solutions of the world for the problems of the world, I prayed? And all my christian friends? And everyone in my church, my denomination, the other churches in my country, my continent, the whole world? Things would change, for sure. Not always in big and mighty ways, but starting on a small scale. Things would change in our relationships, where there is so much mistrust and jealousy even between Christians and between churches. And the love between us, which is what everyone noticed about the first church 2000 years ago, would once again be what sets us apart and actually makes people want to know Christ.
Quite a lot to get from a song… and there’s more for you to explore. If you haven’t listened to it yet or never paid attention to the lyrics before, maybe it’s time to look it up on the web and read through it. And if we all answered the “what if” question with a “we’ll see…”, this world could be a very different place.
Technorati Tags: Casting Crowns, prayer, lyrics, song, church, change, christian
The long wait is over… well, almost. The new design is ready, the infrastructure in place, now it’s time to get those articles ready and that’s what’s going to happen over the next few days.
So what is this site about then? It’s not the lyrics search engine we set out to create years ago and one of the first stories here will explain why. What you will find here are not only reviews of the latest and greatest in christian music, but especially featured articles on the lyrics of many of the songs that have a message for us. So often we focus on the music alone, but there are tons of songs out there that have something to say, so we’ll point you to those gems and also invite you to use the comment function (one of the reasons this is in the form of a blog) to discuss, agree or disagree, share how the songs have blessed you in your pesonal life. And there will be a chance to get involved in other ways, by writing articles and reviewing CDs, soon. As the editor of this site, I hope you enjoy what has been put together and do come back often.
Alive again and relatively well rested after two crazy nights spent on the road to and from Berlin, I’m finally ready to report on this weekend’s event of the year in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. No, not the football finals, that was last week. I’m talking about “Calling all Nations“, a worship gathering initiated by Noel Richards that, after years of planning, finally took place last Saturday, a mere 6 days after the idols of sports had been worshipped in the same place.
Where should I begin? It’s so difficult after an event like this. There are a lot of superlatives that lend themselsves to being used, but I’ll try to restrain myself. There are also a whole lot of negative things that could be said and again, I will try to restrain myself, although a few things need to be said. But let’s start with an overview of what this day was.
We arrived way too early at around 6am, when gates opened at 9, so some of our group went off into Berlin to see some of the sights, while others (like me) spent some time sleeping (or trying to) on the bus. Anyway, at 9 we were let into the stadium, which I must say is an impressive sight, although it looks different without any grass in it. We had seats in the east curve, which is about as far away from the main stage as it gets, but then there were no seats that were really close to the main stage anyway. A smaller second stage was right in front of us, though and throughout the day performaces would alternate between those two stages. A little earlier than scheduled, the “Psalm Drummers” started the program at about 10.45 and from then on there was a steady rotation of worship leaders with some of them playing just one song and others a couple of songs, up to about a maximum playing time of half an hour. There were worship leaders from around 20 different countries (and visitors from 30 countries) and although the start was a bit slow, as the stadium filled up with what must have been more than 20.000 people (no official numbers I’ve heard, sorry) there was a growing sense of unity and enjoyment of worshipping God together.
There were only two short breaks the whole day and there were a few talks by different people and times to pray together afterwards, but the main focus was pretty much on worshipping God through songs. I enjoyed most of the music and I’m sure God enjoyed all of it. Of course, everyone has his favorites, so I will name a few worship leaders that I particularly liked. First off, there was YFriday, which I hadn’t seen live before and who did a great job right at the beginning of the day. Claas P. Jambor is always a treat, he only played one song (Open Skies), but it was great. Reuben Morgan (Hillsong) was fantastic. Delirious? as always played a solid set, but never really got out of “concert mode” – so it was good that the last time slot belonged to Matt Redman, who did a good job in wrapping up the day’s events and bringing us all together in worship once more.
The large variety of worship “artists” (I’m a bit reluctant to use that word…) was also one of the problems of the whole thing. At times it got quite hectic when there was a string of musicians just leading one song (which in many cases people didn’t know and couldn’t sing along to right away) and then handing over to the next person, who would play something in a completely different style. You’d have a band getting the audience fired up and celebrating, only to be followed by another artist starting a slow, quiet song that just didn’t seem to capture the atmosphere. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the entire day that was like that, but it did happen more than once.
And then there’s the big question: what’s the point? Worshipping God together is great and something we are called to, yes. And we did that a lot. But the feeling remains that maybe (and especially with several years of planning) there should have been more. Somehow it feels to me like a tremendous chance was missed to use this event as a catalyst for… something. I don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m wrong and it wasn’t missed and I just didn’t get it. Right now it feels like we had a great day, certainly prayer and worship together and proclaiming the glory of God in this country will change things. But it doesn’t feel like something we’ll be telling our grandkids about one day… let’s hope that it’s just my faith that is too small.
Technorati : Berlin, Calling all Nations, Hillsong, Matt Redman, christian, event, music, worship
