Tales of a Secret Rockstar

Only 14 posts in, and already I have a nice little blog rant to post. First let me acknowledge that I failed to write yesterday. While I'm disappointed I couldn't keep a year long streak alive, it won't deter me from continuing to post daily. And you might see a doubleheader in the near future.

Dan's Rant: I was sitting in the admissions office today, and Praise 106.5 was on the radio. Now, I can respect Christian music, and I appreciate that people want to listen to "positive and encouraging" songs on the radio. I have a separate issue with some of the songs themselves, but I don't want to deal with that today. I just want to ask one question: What's the deal with the strings? Seriously, every mid to slow tempo song has a string arrangement. Now, I have no problem with string arrangements as a general rule. My problem is with intrusive and cumbersome string arrangements. And every Christian song seems to have them! Why is that? It's like Christian producers saw how well the power ballads by bands like Creed and Nickelback were doing and decided to copy all the bad parts! Obnoxious voices and bad strings. Listen to Christian radio for 30 minutes, and tell me I'm wrong. So many strings! Now compare those really busy and contrasting parts with the strings in a song like "Say" by John Mayer. It's like different worlds.

Listening to bad strings is like listening to someone grind their teeth. It's kind of subtle, but you can't get away from it. There's no way you won't notice it, and it drives you crazy.

That's how I feel about the string arrangements in Christian music these days.