The Fortnight Project: Christian Rock

It has often been said that it takes two weeks to form a habit. With that in mind, we begin this experiment (aptly named the Fortnight Project) by taking a compulsive (secular) music listener and subjecting him to two weeks of Christian music. Any point where he would normally listen to music (driving, studying, cleaning etc.) would be filled with religious music. A journal was kept of the various listening habits and thoughts on the music.
Religion caused a lot more music to be born. In every culture in the world, some form of music is used in religious ceremonies/rituals. The Motown sound was born out of the more danceable gospel songs played by churches around Detroit. Much of western music owes its heritage to the church, who first developed the formula of “harmony” and “melody” in church choirs full of monks. The incarnation of Christian Rock is in itself a nearly contradictory form of religious music, as the lyrics are often written to sound nonreligious in hopes of evangelizing to secular music listeners. The aim of the study is to analyze this music and the feelings associated with overexposure to it. It is also like losing a really strange bet. On the week before spring break, the experiment began.

Week One:

The participant began listening to everything from worship music to hardcore and grind-core to Christian ska; “Ska is music for white people who can’t dance but want desperately to do so.” Other notable (not necessarily good) listens were Mxpx and their lovelorn lyric”no one wants to spend eternity alone,” from “Final Slow Dance,” and the grind-core band Zao. With only a few exceptions, the participant stated there was not much music that deserved a second listen. One such artist Sufjan Stevens (to de discussed later) had the best lyrics thus far, “Except that John Wayne Gacy Jr. song. Dude, that’s creep status.” Another band Mewithoutyou (decent band, bad name) was actually purchased on itunes with a gift card. “The old album, and new one, features the half spoken-word, ‘musical-talking’ vocals and dirty guitar sound and lyrics vague enough to not be thought of as christian.” The lyric he is speaking of is “my suspicions are never confirmed, but never denied, from the song “Wolf and I.”
The participant also stated watching television to avoid listening to more music. “I watched Sarah Silverman Program about abortion to counteract the supposed ‘brainwashing.’” Although this was not enough and the somber tone and religious themes started to get to him: “Upon day two I started to realize this kind of music was depressing me.” It was at this point we decided we had found a biased participant for this experiment. “[Speaking about the depression] Partly because the Mxpx and Slick Shoes stuff reminds me of stuff that happened to me when I was younger and in a christian band. Also, partly because it brings up the deceiving unconscious part of me that thinks maybe I’m missing something. This is the way I have always felt about it religion, as if everyone knew something, or had something I didn’t. It was as if they were telling me I needed something, but I didn’t actually know I needed anything until they informed me of that fact. I got the same feeling when my friend got one of the 1st iPods. I hadn’t thought about needing anything else, I had felt complete and satisfied until one day my friend shows up with an mp3 player that could hold 3 times as many mp3s as I owned. The convenience alone overtook me and I needed one, something to fill that void; that void that didn’t exist previous to obtaining this knowledge. This is either a godsend or a really good marketing campaign. Was I blissfully ignorant or just being told I was by the blissfully ignorant?”

Week Two:

As week two began, the participant began to reminisce by listening to the band he was once in, now called Lost Ocean. A few other notable listens included The Classic Crime (“‘pro tools-ed out’ sound ala The Used), Slick Shoes (“‘By what right” is still a good song even though it replaces the punk rock politics with conservative christian politics”), and former 90s Christian hit makers Lifehouse and Jars of Clay and oddball flamenco band Burlap to Cashmire (“fast guitar solo and tight leather pants”). As the participant started to dive into the recent popularity of Underoath, the depression associated with his apparent listening habits began to once again take a toll. “For some odd reason I slept poorly last night and apathetically took a midterm I was not in the least bit prepared for. I would have studied more, but something made me lazy and apathetic. It is strange when the thing you count on to be your release has become thing that might be causing your distress and what you might neat the release from. Many times in the first three days I have wanted to put on Sleater-Kinney and let out my inner-lesbian, or bump Chik Chik Chik (!!!) in my car and yell copious obscenities, but I have refrained in order to keep the internal validity of my experiment (yeah that’s right, I’m in college).” No one is entirely sure if he is right about the internal validity, but this apparent need for a release has caused a sharp decline in the amount written in the journal entries.
.
During the weekend, the participant gave a survey of Christian music to a group of friends while drinking Jagermeister. They discussed the appropriateness of Sufjan Stevens and U2 being used in this experiment as they are not overtly Christian or do not possess lyrics that can be considered “worship songs.” The night ended with the group very drunkenly playing Neutral Milk Hotel, which was argued to count as religious music because of the lyric in “King of Carrot Flowers Parts 2 & 3,” “I love you, Jesus Christ.” The following day, accompanied by some friends, the participant wrote “a very strange and somewhat erotic satirical worship song. After recording it on an old tape recorder we played this quite catchy songs to a few more of our friends. The song itself involves a strong masturbatory context and some somewhat homoerotic comments. A rock journalist once made the argument that christian rock is an outlet for latent homosexuality.” The researchers could not find the link but have been told the argument was mentioned in a Chuck Klosterman book.

The study showed more of a change in behavior as a function of change in music habits, not a correlation to the type of music. The religious rhetoric caused depression in the participant, but only because of previous experience with performing in a Chrisitan group. The study is suggested to be tried, in some form, by other to see if results are consistent with ours (and common sense, I guess) and posted below in the comments section.

~ by Ryan on 09/29/2008.