A moment with singer-songwriter Oliver Anthony on the Winston Marshall Podcast recently struck a chord with me. Marshall, formerly a member of Mumford & Sons, gushes about how stunned and pleasantly surprised he was when Anthony (known for his tune “Rich Men North of Richmond”) started reading Bible verses between songs at his Shepherd’s Bush Empire set. It was “countercultural,” says Marshall, and he goes on to relate how he was told to hide his Christian faith in order to succeed in the music business.  The chord it struck with me was an F major, as in F “major fail” — because it just plummeted me into every claustrophobic memory of being told the same basic thing over the years: “Cut the Jesus crap or you’ll never make it in the music business.” Now, I don’t need to be told that there is a fully-fledged multi-billion dollar Christian music industry out there. I know that full well. It is dominated by music that is performed in evangelical churches and sounds a lot like whatever was popular on the radio 6 months before, with occasional bursts of brilliance. In that way, it is like a delayed mirror image of the secular music industry — so much so that one is tempted to think that it is a separate industry. It is and it isn’t. Most of these Christian acts start out in churches on Sunday rather than dive bars and dance clubs. On the other hand, they’re “discovered” by “the music industry” where most new artists are discovered today: social media. The same conglomerates ultimately distribute their music to the same platforms we all listen to, and with few exceptions, their fans are buying concert tickets through the same global entertainment group and going to shows controlled by the same. Which is all to say — how fascinating it is to one such as I that a “Christian music industry” is somehow maintained by, and functions within, “the music industry” as a separate entity, one where “Jesus crap” fuels the motor, so long as it mirrors (and therefore advertises to Christians) what’s happening in the broader “music industry” while keeping the latter insulated from said “Jesus crap” by staying firmly in its own lane. Curious, no?... Keep reading with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to Seán McMahon to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A subscription gets you:
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Saturday, March 15, 2025
Song and Dance People
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