#13 Jesus Freak

Having lost my original list I think my countdown order might go a bit adrift.  Ho hum.

Anyway, here is another musical turning point for me.   This time the profound affect was on my attitude towards Christian music.  When I became a Christian I was well into music (pirating albums every week from the tape library) and it never occurred to me that there was any such thing as Christian music.  I soon wished it hadn’t.  It was the era when being a Christian and owning a guitar meant you should start a band.  People’s attitudes to CCM are still badly affected by this;  although they are also affected by snobbery – I’ve watched people (including Christians) go off music simply because they discovered it’s Christian.  I think they might be afraid the big kids will laugh at them.

Well, it all changed for me in 1995.  Up til then I owned two increasingly-unplayed Amy Grant albums and a few frequently played Michael Card albums but nothing exciting because Christians don’t make that kind of album.   Then some of our YP lent me Jesus Freak and I went into shock.  Partly because it was grungy in places and included rap (anathema!) – but mostly because I had never heard  Christian music with such high production values, no bad tracks and which required being played very loud on a big stereo (the effect will be limited on Spotify, I’m afraid).  And it even had a poem at the end. And made fun of cheesy gospel singers.

Possibly no one else had ever heard these things either, as it soon became the biggest selling CCM album of all time and was, I think, the first to get its own rack in some big, secular US record stores.   DC Talk was, for a few years, the biggest Christian band ever.

And they didn’t just say “I love you Lord” 50 different ways:

Bombarded by philosophies that satisfy the surface
I flee to something deeper
At the risk of seeking purpose
How can I hang in this environmental state of being
When everything I'm striving for
Is nothing that I'm seeing

Anyway, I think it is a milestone album and opened up the door for me to a whole load of great bands.

Highlights for me.....?    I got into it through Coloured People, but soon just loved the album as a whole.  But probably Like it Love it Need it, Between You and Me,  and Mind’s Eye.  But it’s hard to choose.