How Do You Get to the Dove Awards?
Christianity Today (2022). Author Kelsey Kramer McGinnis quotes from God Rock, Inc. in her article on the Gospel Music Association’s Dove Awards (the Christian music industry’s answer to the Grammy Awards).
Is the Future of Christian Music on TikTok?
Christianity Today (2022). Author Rachel Seo quotes from God Rock, Inc. in her article on TikTok and Christian recording artist Montell Fish.
Jesus on the Charts, 1957–1970
Pop songs with religious themes were not uncommon on the (secular) airwaves in the 1950s and 1960s. In this post I consider why that was the case, and provide a list of many such songs, some by very famous artists.
‘The Jesus Music’ Is a Love Letter to Fans
Christianity Today (2021). Author Kelsey Kramer McGinnis quotes from God Rock, Inc. in her review of the just release feature-length documentary about CCM, The Jesus Music.
Keith Green Vs. the Music Industry
Keith Green was a Christian artist whose ethics came to contradict the commercial necessities of the Christian music industry. I glossed over this contradiction and its conflict in my earlier primer to Green’s career and discography, but here I go more detail and provide some primary sources that I have found to be very enlightening.
Larry Norman Primer and Discography (1968–1981)
Larry Norman, the “father of Christian rock,” released several albums in the 1970s after contributing to two records by the Bay-area psych-rock band People! in the late 1960s.
An Origin Story
When I was growing up, my family attended a Southern Baptist church in New Jersey. I was first introduced to Christian rock in the 1990s but didn’t start researching it until 2009. In this piece — a longer version of the origin story to God Rock, Inc. found in the book’s introduction — I describe discovering and abandoning Christian music during my adolescence, ultimately rediscovering it (with more than a little help from my youngest sister).
Keith Green Primer and Discography (1965–1982)
Keith Green released several general (secular) market singles as a pre-teen artist in the 1960s, followed by 4 Christian albums between 1977 and 1982.
Recent Books on Christian Music
Popular Music Books in Process roundtable presentation (2021). Nathan Myrick, Marcell Silva Steuernagel, and myself discussed our recent books in conversation with each other as part of the PMBiP series of author talks, co-sponsored by IASPM-US, JPMS, and the Popcon.
Amy Grant Primer and Discography (1977–2013)
Amy Grant released 15 studio albums between 1977 and 2013, plus several Christmas albums, live recordings, and greatest hits packages. She has recorded for Myrrh and Word, and has been signed to Sparrow since 2007.
Selling Out or Buying In? CCM Magazine and Anxieties over Commercial Priorities in Christian Music, 1980s–1990s
Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture (2020). In 1992, EMI acquired Sparrow Records. At that time, EMI was one of the “Big Six” (secular) major record labels; Sparrow was the largest and most successful label in the Christian record industry. As in other sectors of the music and entertainment industries, reactions to corporate consolidations are mixed. CCM magazine and its sister publications, for decades the primary sources of information about and for the Christian market, provide a unique opportunity to observe and analyze these tensions leading up to these mergers and acquisitions.
“As For Me and My House”: Christian Music Executives Roundtable
Journal of Popular Music Studies (2020). At the 2018 IASPM-US conference in Nashville, I organized a roundtable of Christian music executives. This was a unique opportunity to hear Christian music executives discussing the unique challenges and issues they face in a popular music market for which religious identity is necessarily a core component. Roundtable participants have worked in A&R, executive leadership, higher education, music ministry, music super- vision, production, publishing, radio promotions, and recording, among other roles, and represent more than 100 years of cumulative experience as music industry professionals.
“Find a Way”: Amy Grant and Christian Pop’s Mainstream Crossover
AMS conference presentation (2019). In this paper I argue that Amy Grant’s success was the cumulative result of longer strategies to cross her over from the relatively small Christian market to the massive general mainstream pop market. Archival research reveals business and artistic decisions that prepared Grant for her first attempt at crossover with the 1985 album Unguarded.
Archival Research Methods and Music Industry Pedagogy
Proceedings of the 2018 MEIEA International Summit (2018). In this article, I discuss the value of archival research and primary document sources to pedagogy in music industry education. I describe the archival methods I have employed in a research project documenting contemporaneous discourse about the corporate consolidation of Christian record labels within (secular) major record labels in the early 1990s.
“As for me and my house”: Nashville, the Home of Christian Music
IASPM-US roundtable (2018). For this roundtable, current and former Christian music professionals who have worked in A&R, executive leadership, higher education, music ministry, publishing, and radio promotions, among other roles, address the unique challenges that face Christian music. With many combined decades of experience in organizations large and small, our panelists are well-attuned to the city’s centeredness to the Christian music industries. We consider how Christian music has impacted Nashville, address the difficulties of maintaining a profitable business while conducting a ministry, and consider the boundaries of Christian music—increasingly porous as they are—in the broader contexts of globalized entertainment.
Abandoning Shelters: Christian Popular Music and Crossover Strategies
IASPM-US conference presentation (2017). In this paper, I critically analyze the strategies of two crossover cases: Amy Grant, who became the first Christian pop singer with a number-one Billboard Hot 100 single following the 1991 release of “Baby, Baby,” and Tooth and Nail Records, a Christian metal and punk label whose artists straddle multiple margins, crossing over from one to another. In doing so, I build upon the works of Hebdige, Toynbee, Weisbard, and others to theorize crossover as a process through which niche markets change over time.
From the Margins to the Mainstream: Two Crossover Cases
Embracing the Margins symposium presentation (2015). In a critical analysis of two crossover songs, I examine the ways in which ethics and aesthetics are implicated in crossover success—what Jason Toynbee and others have described as “mainstreaming,” and what Dick Hebdige has identified as the dominant culture’s integration of subcultural style via the commodity form. This paper thus moves beyond comparative or categorical definitions of margins and mainstreams to theorize the process of one becoming the other.
Popular Music Margins Becoming Mainstreams: Amy Grant, Elliott Smith, and the Political Economy of Niche Markets
Brown Music colloquium presentation (2015). What happens when artists transcend the margins and their markets? I examine the ways in which ethics and aesthetics are implicated in crossover success—what Jason Toynbee (2002) has described as “mainstreaming,” and what Dick Hebdige (1979) has identified as the dominant culture’s integration of subcultural style via the commodity form. This paper thus moves beyond comparative or categorical definitions of margins and mainstreams to theorize the process of popular music in transition from one market to another.
Christian Popular Music, U.S.A.
The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, Canterbury Press (2013). Christian popular music is an umbrella category for a sonically diverse repertoire of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century evangelical Protestant commercial popular music. It encompasses several distinct subcategories based on musical genre, industrial context, or function including, but not limited to, Jesus Music, Contemporary Christian Music (CCM), Praise & Worship music, and Christian rock.
Billy Ray Hearn
The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, Canterbury Press (2013). A visionary and innovator in the Christian music industry, Hearn is primarily known as the founder of Sparrow Records, currently a part of the Capitol Christian Music Group family of record labels and distributors owned by Universal Music Group, a subsidiary of media conglomerate Vivendi.
Search and navigate extras
- music industries
- festivals
- gamelan
- God Rock Inc
- Boston
- CCM
- Northeastern University
- Christian rock
- panels
- congregational music
- Tufts University
- worship
- SCM
- record labels
- Nashville
- ethics
- methods
- Chicago
- Northeastern Global News
- University of Chicago
- radio
- punk
- SEM
- capital
- AMS
- TikTok
- subculture
- IASPM-US
- Furnace Fest
- sing-alongs
- hardcore
- Amy Grant
- crossover
- Taylor Swift
- vinyl
- introductions
- TIME
- scene
- AAR
- Universal Music Group
- Beer & Hymns
- emo
- MEIEA
- Christianity Today
- DePaul University
- Future of Pop
- community
- Keith Green
- discography
- SAM