Lyrically speaking…..

I wanted to take some time to share something that is my passion. Something that music can not live without. Yet it feels like we have pushed it aside, and placed our thoughts on other stuff. Songwriting…. To me, Songwriting does not live because of music. Music lives because of lyrics.(Yes some may disagree, and I get that your instrument is your voice-Not what I’m talking about here) Lyrics can stand on there own, lyrics break down walls, lyrics make history and change the future. Is it me or has music fell to truisms and cliches. The same lyrics dressed in different clothes. My point comes down very bluntly- “If you can not create your own words to express your heart, then you don’t truly believe it”. In other words, if it’s truly from the heart , it will scream it without you saying what feels easiest to say. Now I am not saying that all artists today are writing lifeless songs, but for the most part that is happening.

Give me something real, give me something full of life, give me something that kicks me in the teeth, give me something that I immediately attach myself to it. I feel like we count our audience as inadequate of understanding anything. We dumb it down so much that we limit ourselves to a certain vocabulary . I’ve been around many artist who constantly say, “I wish I could write that, but no one would get it.” I hate to be the one to break it to you, but your not that much of a genius. Write what your heart tells you to write. BECAUSE there is no one else that can write that.

One thing that kills me, and continues to eat at me is the numerous “Christian” songs that use the same words to express what they feel towards Christ, or how they view Christ. I don’t know about you but my God is big enough that there are too many words to express my feelings to “My Bravery”. Yet it is not all your fault, there are many in the ear telling us how that will never make it to radio, that will never be sang in a church, that will never connect. One of the main things, that has taken me years to get over is the fact that all of this does not matter. What matters is you speak the truth. Again- Speak what is in your heart, not what everyone tells you will sell. This is all trivial, everyones “likes” and “wants” change each day. When something is “REAL” it consumes you and no one can deny it.                                                                                                                         It’s time for people to step up and break the mold. I want nothing more than for my music to stick out not because the songs are great, or because they are sang throughout the churches across the world, but because I listened to my heart and people put their selves into the song. Not because I wrote a song I knew would sell, or a song I knew has every ingredient for a #1 hit.

Our main calling as a Songwriter is to write songs for people and not write songs for people. We don’t need to write lyrics just because a certain demographic will buy into it or because it sounds “Right’. We are called to write lyrics that we fight with, that we have to dive deep inside ourselves and wear our heart on our sleeves. I believe  thats when you will find more and more people believing what you have to say. Even if it is different. Look at songs of the past, they were stories. What happened to the stories, what happened to sharing a part of your life. We spend most of our time explaining how great Christ is. Yes He is, but He also knows that. Granted if we didn’t have songs like this there would be a major need for this. Yet it seems all “Christian” music consists of is telling God how great He is. I feel God wants to know your struggles, your pain, your anger sometimes. As dirty and broken as it is.

Some songs I write, you will never hear. They will never see the light of day. Because they are not great songs?….No. Because they are songs that I wrote, that after finishing up the song I realized it was meant for just me. Some songs I write that you do hear sometimes are very hard for me to sing, even after months or years of singing it, because it was wrote through a struggle of mine, because it is me screaming out pain and is very intimate to me. Yet I know the song lives outside of me and there is something God does amazing when we are vulnerable, and just leave it all out on the table.

Throughout my next couple of blogs I am going to post the stories behind the songs on the new EP. What made me write them. What I was fighting with, what I was dealing with at the time. So stay tuned, and let me know what helps you write. What do you feel about lyrics/songs today.

Till then………..