(7 mins. reading time)

What image comes to mind when you hear Queen’s classic song, We Will Rock You?

Is it your favourite team when they’re leading in a championship game? Is it Queen’s performance at Live Aid? Or is it something completely different? In a parallel universe known as the Haemel household, this song was used in a unique way.

As toddlers, our children were serenaded as their hands and faces were washed after mealtime to We Will Scrub You!, set to the tune of We Will Rock You! My song writing abilities consisted of taking an artist’s work and changing the lyrics to suit my own purposes. Years later walking through Canadian Tire or the grocery store our daughters would pick up on the songs piped through the speakers and exclaim, “That’s actually a real song! We thought you made that up.” They were confused and shook up. I had to confess to them that their father was not a song writer after all.

I wanted to understand song writing though the lens of a professional song writer. So I chatted with Jason, the Worship Director at our church, who has a history in the professional music industry.

A Songs Purpose

A major question for a song writer is how will this song impact the listener? Looking at the Psalms, the songs have a variety of purposes. Congregational and individual songs were used for:

• Regular temple worship
• Festival celebrations (i.e., Passover)
• Company singing during the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem
• Personal devotion songs of praise and lament
• Historical songs remembering God’s deliverance and His promises
• Songs looking ahead to the messiah

How to Write a Song

I asked Jason to describe the song writing process.  He explained that song writing usually begins with a single chord and the melody is developed by adding more chords. The music happens first, then the words follow either soon after (three seconds) or much later (three years). Inspiration for songs come from many sources, and Jason gave a beautiful example.

Pacing the hospital floor and cradling his medically fragile newborn daughter, he recalled, “I was running out of things to pray about, and a melody comes and then words follow when I didn’t know what to pray.” When we exhaust our vocabulary, God sends a melody. In the Psalms, David echoed a similar thought, “… at night his song is with me — a prayer to the God of my life” (Psalm 42:8 NIV).

In his memoir, Surrender, Bono also shares on the mystery of music, “Singing erupts from somewhere we don’t understand and communicates with a part of us we can’t otherwise reach. Though it unlocks emotion, it seems to break into feelings deeper than the obvious.”

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The most familiar of the Psalms is Psalm 23 which is known as the shepherd psalm. Have you ever wondered if this was David’s favourite psalm from the seventy-three that he wrote? When I asked Jason about a favourite song he had written, he laughed and answered,

“songs are like children – you can’t have a favourite song!”

However, looking back at the songs he had written, Jason recalled memories related to each song’s inspiration, the season of life he was experiencing at the time, and the people that he collaborated with for the song. There are individual memories attached to each song making each one unique and special, like our children.

Music as Universal Connection

In his song writing journey, Jason acknowledged that the form of the lyric changes over time from being less concrete to more abstract. For example, expressing love to his wife could be written concretely as, “I love you!” or abstractly as, “You make my heart smile!” The use of metaphor makes the song accessible to others, not just the person for whom it was originally written. And the Psalms are rich in metaphors!

My favourite insight from Jason is about the universal influence of music,

“It’s unprejudiced and holds no barriers – people can relate to a song on so many levels even though it’s the same song.”

Music is universal in its appeal, and it has the power to bring people together. Music is something that all people can enjoy and relate to independent of their language, culture, or social status.

A Songs Appeal

Music can bring people together at concerts, places of worship and celebrations. Part of a church worship service is getting the congregation ready to receive the message through songs of praise. Jason pointed out that this is an example of how a song writer would be writing for a specific audience (worshippers) and for a specific purpose (turn their attention from themselves and towards God).

Jason noted that the target audience is a key element in song writing. Writing for a pop-rock audience and radio air play (how will people like this?) can be very different to leading worship at church (how will this minister to the church?). 

Songs written for radio need to hook listeners quickly if they want air play, much like movies make it or break it on opening weekend. Songs meant for radio are intentionally produced to have catchy tunes that have you singing along and tapping your toes. The point is repetition which translates into income for the artists. The recording artist hopes that the airtime will result in people requesting that the song be played, that people will buy the album or subscribe to the song on music streaming services which will generate a larger audience and income. The appeal from these songs can often be short lived.

For example, the number one hit song in 1979 was from a band called The Knack. Does that name ring a bell? I guess you would have had to been alive at the time, so excuse my going back in time. Do you remember their big hit? Here’s a hint – Weird Al Yankovic made a parody cover called My Bologna.

The record label promoting The Knack’s first album used a similar design and style as the Beatles’ early 1960s albums. The Knack’s lead singer acknowledged the band’s likeness to the Beatles, claiming that it was their intention to present The Knack as a replica of the British Invasion. But this Beatles imitation band was a one hit wonder.

Songs that Last

The Beatles, who were being imitated by The Knack, embody longevity in music. Or think of another band that comes to your mind – The Rolling Stones or The Who from the British invasion – Rush for Canadian fans. More recently Coldplay could be added to that list. And my personal favourite, U2. All these groups exude longevity in their music careers.

The purpose in the comparison is not to highlight my favourite band but to show the contrast between catchy music and music that endures. There is another type of song that grows on us over time. We like the song the first time that we hear it and the more we listen, the more the song grows on us. These songs have longevity or staying power in comparison to the one hit wonders. U2’s Beautiful Day is a personal example of such as song for both the positive message and the musical style.

When I think of the Psalms, I think of songs that penetrate the heart and take up permanent residence. They are songs that we go back to repeatedly, and they never get old or lose their magic.

Where are We Heading?

Much has changed in church music during my lifetime. The emergence and development of Christian contemporary music has significantly impacted styles and singing in churches. From hymnbooks to overhead projectors to slideshows; from organs and choirs to guitars, drums and lights! From truth-focused lyrics to a grace focus. This shift has occurred in the past forty to fifty years.

Today we have radio and recording technology to convey and capture music. In the days that the Psalms were written and sung, the songs were memorized and passed orally from one generation to the next. No iTunes or Spotify. This makes me think, what will church music and singing look like twenty years from now, or a thousand?

Up Next

The power of music.

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Notes:

Notes

1. Jason Dunn, Pers. Comm.
2. Bono, Surrender – 40 songs, one storey (Penguin Random House, 2022), 539.
3. Theo Cateforis, Are We Not New Wave?: Modern Pop at the Turn of the 1980s (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 126.