Northview Community Church

5 Landmark Worship Albums

By Johnny Markin on October 26, 2009 in Culture (5) Comments

There is a program on BBC’s Radio 4 called ‘Desert Island Discs’, in which guests can nominate which ten music albums they would like to be stranded with. They then play a track from each album with a comment from the guest about why they chose that recording.

I always wanted to be a guest on that show, but instead, I’ll settle for blogging about ‘my 5’ landmark worship albums (not in any order). It may not represent your top 5… you may offer those as comments, but let’s get started!

1. Delirious “Glo” - (1999) – What artist could possibly get away with combining passionate God-focused lyrics with a musical blending of Gregorian chant and razor-blade searing electric guitar parts?? While there are many great songs on the CD, one in particular stands out: God, You’re My God’.

2. David Crowder Band “Illuminate” - (2003) – This is both a listener’s worship album, and one you totally want to sing along with! Combining acoustic/electric guitar riffs with neo-retro synth and drum programming (using the then ground-breaking software ‘Reason’), this album has great songs, great playing, and wonderfully creative spaces for simply enjoying music as God has created us to do! Standout tracks include: ‘O Praise Him’, ‘Revolutionary Love’, ‘Open Skies’, and their beautiful rendition of ‘All Creatures of our God and King’.

3. Keith Green “Songs For The Shepherd” – (1982) – In an era of the exploding commercial success of Contemporary Christian Music, vis a vis Amy Grant, et al, Keith Green went against the flow to record one of the earliest albums of ‘worship’ music with a modern twist. He had already made a statement about the dangers of commercialism in Christian music by releasing his album ‘So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt’ independently, and only asking for whatever people could afford as payment. This recording has classics such as ‘There Is A Redeemer’ and his passionate orchestrated version of ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’. It is, perhaps fittingly, the last recording he did before his tragic death in a plane crash in July of that year.

4. UK Vineyard “Hungry” - (1999) - One of the finest examples of the kind of ‘authentic’ lyric writing that stirred so many hearts, with songs such as ‘Hungry’, ‘Humble King’, ‘Be The Centre,’ and the beautifully stirring original version of Kathryn Scott’s ‘This Is The Air I Breathe’. Co-produced by Brian Doerksen, these songs still sound and sing fresh in any worship service.

5. Hillsong United “All Of The Above” - (2007) – A studio recording (as opposed to their many live ones) where they are able to take the time and creativity to push out some musical boundaries, and deliver an album full of passionate songs with the sound which has become the voice of a new worshipping generation. From the driving energy of ‘Break Free’ to the airy beauty of ‘You’, this 72-minute album is a journey for the listener. Highlights include Brooke Fraser’s haunting ‘Lead Me To The Cross’ and ‘Hosanna’, as well as a spectacular 14-minute version of ‘Saviour King’, which sounds about as ‘live’ as a studio recording can be when the song reaches its heights. This disc lived in my car’s CD player for a large part of my sabbatical that year!

Previous Comments

#1 from adam on October 27, 2009

Cool. I would also add that Enter the Worship Circle and Jesus Culture have been putting out some beautiful, authentic, stuff recently. Welcome Wagon also put out a foundational “worship” record this year on Asthmatic Kitty.

It would be interesting to have a conversation about artists that produce deeply spiritual records, but wouldn’t call themselves Christian (AA Bondy, Brand New, and Noah and the Whale come to mind).

#2 from Johnny Markin on October 27, 2009

You’ve touched on something that by pointing out some lesser-known artists. I think there’s a real hunger among worshippers, especially worship leaders, to find music that’s out of the mainstream, but work really well in congregational settings. There’s a site in the UK called Worshipjournal.com that enables worship leaders to share their own compositions with each other, and represents an emerging (not emergant) grass-roots worship music culture that could bring freshness to the scene.

#3 from katrina on October 30, 2009

hmmmm…i don’t think you can really get away from the Cutting Edge album when it seemed to be exactly that in the worship movement some 15 years ago. some of those will forever be timeless, “did you feel…” and “obsession.”

what else…MWS did the world a favor when he went into recording live worship albums, the best of which is the recent “A New Hallelujah.” I also cannot ignore the worship movement out of IHOP in Kansas that is producing some very spirit-filled, spontaneous songs. And i have been a quiet fan of Eoghan Heaslip out of Ireland and think that he has been mistakenly overlooked. that’s my two-cents.

whoops, forgot the most obvious, our compadres en español: Marcos Witt, Jesus Adrian Romero, Julio Melgar. Tragic really that those songs will never, ever be able to translate in the same powerful way that they are expressed in Spanish.

#4 from Graham Nickel on November 03, 2009

From my era in the late 80s and 90s I’d say the Langley Vineyard’s “Changed by Your Glory” (1989) led by Andy Park and a very young Brian Doerksen leading some of his new songs like “Faithful One,” “Refiner’s Fire,” and “I lift My Eyes Up (Psalm 121)” is the most important and influential Canadian worship album ever. I’d follow that closely with Vineyard Music’s “Touching the Father’s Heart #18 - Light the Fire Again” Tracks 1-6 and 13 - basically the Langley Vineyard/Brian Doerksen set - including “Creation Calls” and “Will You Worship”.

For late 90’s “British Invasion” worship I’d agree with Johnny on Delirious, but I’d say the Cutting Edge albums were more influential. We passed those paper sleeved ones around (Yellow and Purple Vols. 1 & 2 and Pink and Blue Vols. 3 & 4) in the pre-internet days like sacred totems that you could only get if someone brought them straight from England.

#5 from Johnny Markin on November 10, 2009

No question Cutting Edge stuff was influential. I remember all the kids in my youth group in England picking up guitars in that era, and learning some basic chords so they could sing, and even lead ‘I Could Sing Of Your Love’ and ‘I Found Jesus’. But living in the UK at the time, I missed out on a lot of Vineyard stuff that was out at that time. I’m catching up now!

Blog Menu

Categories

Archives

The Northview Blog