![]() ![]() "For me, I think it's just really interesting to see the way that the industry mechanics have influenced the way the most used songs find their way into the church."īaker said there are reasons why the most popular songs heard in worship are written by just a handful of songwriters from a few megachurches, labeling Hillsong, Passion, Bethel and Elevation the "big four." She said megachurches are more established than artists who are not affiliated with them. "The fact that by 2017, every song after that that was in the top-25 on our list were all released as singles," Baker said. ![]() The part that fascinated Baker the most about the results was the influence of a song being released as a single. It's really true.' So, that kind of was surprising for me." But then to just see it so data-driven and just laid out in Excel spreadsheets, like 'oh, wow, there it is. "A lot of people have this sense that there's a small number of large players as it were in this arena, in this field. It's really to genuinely put it through the test to see whether or not the data stacks up to the theory," Jolicoeur said. And then, the goal is to not just try to reinforce that hypothesis. "You often go into these kinds of projects with a thesis, a hypothesis that you want to test. Marc Jolicoeur, the worship and creative arts pastor at Moncton Wesleyan Church in New Brunswick, Canada, and another WLR study author, told CP, "I guess we can say we were surprised at how unsurprising the results were." "How are they interacting with these big artists and the songs that they're putting out? And then, how our worship leaders are engaging with the contemporary worship music?" "And then the other part of our study was how is that landscape and environment being engaged by worship leaders," she said in an interview. Shannon Baker, a postdoctoral fellow in music and digital humanities with Baylor University who assisted with the study's findings, told The Christian Post that the study sought to answer "who are the main players" in contemporary Christian music. However, the study noted that "Bethel Music's successful collaborations with Wickham preceded the song's release." The lone song not written or popularized by the five megachurches was "Great Things" by Phil Wickham. ![]() Of the 37 top-25 songs tied to megachurches, 13 are associated with Bethel, nine with Passion, nine with Hillsong, five with Elevation and one from North Point. Of the 38, 37 were either written or popularized by one of five megachurches: Bethel Church, Hillsong, Elevation Church, Passion Church and North Point Community Church. The CCLI lists, researchers said, are seen as the “Billboard charts of church music," while the PraiseCharts is "where churches might purchase chord charts and arrangements." WLR research reveals that from 2010-2020, only 38 worship songs appeared on the Christian Copyright Licensing International and PraiseCharts top-25 lists. Worship Leader Research released a study titled " (Almost) 100% of the Top 25 Worship Songs are associated with just a handful of Megachurches," which analyzed where popular worship songs originated. Just about every worship song that hit the top-25 music charts from 2010 to 2020 were co-written or popularized by one of five megachurches, according to a recent study. Attendees of the Code Orange Revival worship at Elevation Church in Charlotte, N.C., Jan. Listen to our civil rights and protest songs playlist on Spotify or Tidal. Not that it gives us any excuse not to try. Not all are strictly ‘protest’ songs, either, but each represents an important piece of social commentary on a life those of us not directly affected will never be able to properly understand. Going back as far as the turn of the 20th century – with a poem often referred to as the black national anthem – and covering songs of the Civil Rights Movement right up to those currently guiding the Black Lives Matter campaign, a list as short as this can only ever be an overview. (For the avoidance of doubt: admitting that privilege is not to admit you have had an easy life, similar to the way saying Black Lives Matter is not the same as saying others don’t.)Īnd in lieu of sufficient formal education about racism and its toll on history, the collection of songs below has helped direct our own personal learning over the years. The killing of George Floyd last month, for which policeman Derek Chauvin has since been charged with second-degree murder, has sparked protests in the US and worldwide – both in support of African Americans and to highlight the centuries-long and continuing discrimination against black people across the globe.įor those of us privileged enough not to have been discriminated against solely due to the colour of our skin, music has long been as important as any film or literature as a means of learning about these issues.
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