American Idol Shouts to the Lord?
So everyone has been talking about this event that occurred on American Idol Gives Back the other day.. (Nadine, Steph, Josh Harris have all mentioned it). I’m not going to touch upon the whole controversy about them taking out the name of Jesus and replacing it with Shepherd.
This is what’s on my mind: I think many of the contestants for competitions such as American Idol or Canadian Idol are actually born-again Christians. I would think that a high percentage of them than normal, actually. It wouldn’t surprise me if Simon Cowell picked the song in order to boost the acceptance from the large Christian audience, but it also wouldn’t surprise me if many of the contestants actually decided to pick the song themselves. In North America, the church is one of the primary producers of young musical talent. Children are exposed to music and singing even from a young age… those who attend church from a young age would be exposed to it even more than the unchurched children. These children are also encouraged to sing out loud! Furthermore, young talent would be even more encouraged to sing and perform in church, as is the story of many current divas and rock stars. Their talent would be developed a lot quicker than others.
I don’t think it would be pure coincidence that of the thousands of horrible untalented wannabe “idols”, the ones that remain and actually compete for the remainder of the show would be those who grew up in the church and developed a love for music in general. And then with this generation of contestants, they probably did grow up in youth group or childhood hearing “Shout to the Lord” (which isn’t really that old of a song in the grand scheme of things).
In my opinion, contestants on American Idol (or its variants) should be allowed to sing nearly any song! Of course it would be to their benefit to sing well-known ones to garner more votes and emotional attachment from their fans. For some reason people rarely give any thought to the other songs that are sung, when in fact every song is written from a worldview and with a perspective on how to live life. We’d be shooting ourselves in the foot if we were to state that “church music” should only be sung “during church”.
This is all coming from a guy who doesn’t really watch any TV at all now. And I really enjoy that I’m not with the times in terms of what’s on TV. It’s so refreshing. I only wish I could watch hockey.
April 12th, 2008 at 12:01 am
it’s like when Kalan Porter sang MercyMe’s “I Can Only Imagine” on national tv.
April 12th, 2008 at 12:49 am
yah that’s right, i remember that episode! he’s a great example. but he’s not going to be a great best-selling artist, simply because he’s not of that character or personality. he probably is a great and wonderful guy, a great singer, but Canadian Idol and whatever record company signed him probably realized quickly that he has a very limited marketability!
April 12th, 2008 at 4:52 am
That Catholic columnist guy that Josh Harris quoted on his blog brings up some good points, that it’s probably unfair to try and get the group of Idol singers to sing a Christian song. It puts them in a hard place if they don’t want to (and nobody wants people to be manipulated into singing Praise & Worship).
Anyways, my sister has said the same thing as you before, that Church probably produces a disproportionately larger percentage of Idol contestants.
Finally, I’m curious: does Sarah get her love for hockey from your influence?
April 12th, 2008 at 11:20 am
paulman, i have no idea where her main influence for hockey comes from. i can imagine i have some effect. i’ve never played ice hockey though.