A strange thing is happening with the songs we are singing in churches here in the UK.
At some point in the last decade we just stopped singing our own songs.
If you take a look at CCLI's top 25 songs sung in UK churches, you'll see that we love singing brand new songs from the US and Australia...but there's nothing new from UK writers.
The most popular song in UK churches is '10,000 Reasons’, followed by ’In Christ Alone’ – but they are ten, and 20 years old, respectively. Why aren't there any new songs there?
If you zoom out and look at the top 100 you'll find a chunk of songs from the UK, but almost all of them are either hymns, or songs that have been around for more than 20 years.
What's happened? Have we stopped writing our own songs? Or do they exist, but UK churches are choosing not to pick up on them?
DOES IT MATTER?
You might be wondering why it matters where our songs come from. Well, in one way it doesn’t, God is the same in every country. His attributes, his nearness, his tenderness are not dependent on your nationality. So this isn’t some sort of Brexit-inspired rant about the need to “take back control” of our worship playlists.
The wine-making world talks about “terroir” - that grapes taste different, not just because of the variety, but because of where they are grown. The weather, the altitude, the specific character of the soil all contribute to what the eventual wine will taste like. This happens in music too. Think of a band like the Arctic Monkeys – you can hear they’re from Sheffield – and when other people play their stuff, it just doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound authentic. PC.
