The Worst Church Song Ever

A very long time ago, I started a series called Best and Worst, in which I examine the best or worst of all time in a given category.

Except, technically it isn’t a “series” until now, because I forgot all about it until I became acquainted with The Worst Church Song Ever a couple of weeks ago.

For those of you who have spent a significant portion of your life singing church songs, if you’re like me, you probably have your share of favorites (Abide With Me, Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing, Let The Lower Lights Be Burning), as well as your share of songs that you would rather never sing again (Follow Me, Ivory Palaces).

This post isn’t about any of those songs though. It’s about We’re A Rainbow, a song that I discovered in our homemade youth song book a couple of weeks ago.

Unfortunately, there’s no music to the words, and since I don’t know anyone who knows the song, I have no idea how to sing it, but you can read the lyrics for yourself:

“We’re a rainbow made of Christians,
We’re an army for the Lord.
We’ve no weapons that can harm you,
Christian love is much too strong.”

I don’t really even know where to begin, but I’ll try.

First of all, the song is really, really short. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if you’re going to only have four lines, they need to be very good lines, and these aren’t.

Secondly, there’s no real attempt made at following any discernable rhyme scheme. I guess that’s small potatoes compared to the rest of the song’s problems, but it just helps to make the words of the song seem even more randomly chosen.

Third, a good song should convey a clear message. The message of We’re A Rainbow seems to be that Christians are a loving rainbow army, and I’m not really even sure what that means. Maybe I’d have a better sense of the message if the song itself was longer than 25 words.

Fourth, the different lines of the songs are all…wait, let’s just stop right there. I’m sorry, but I just can’t continue to pretend to seriously analyze a song that starts off with “We’re a rainbow made of Christians…”

My humble nomination for the title of The Worst Church Song Ever.

UPDATE: I recently received an email informing me that I only had the chorus to this song, and that the full lyrics are as below:

“We’re a rainbow made of Christians,
We’re an army for the Lord.
We’ve no weapons that can harm you,
Christian love is much too strong.”

So we sing in Unity,
‘Live and Love Eternally,’
so become a Child of God,
and enjoy a life of peace.

When you’re feeling sad and lonely,
and you cross is hard to bear,
come to Jesus, he will teach you,
to obtain sweet peace through prayer.”

While I still think the chorus is somewhat hard to stomach, the verses are certainly a big improvement.

My apologies for the inadvertent mistake.

Pandora.com

Am I the last person in Western Civilization to find out about Pandora.com?

In case the answer to that question is “no,” Pandora is an internet radio service that allows you to create your own “stations” which play music that you like.

You start by picking a song or artist that you like, and then Pandora chooses similar music. As each song plays, you can either give it a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down”, determining if that specific song and others like it will appear again on your station.

The service is completely free; you just have to register with a username and password in order to save your stations.

I haven’t used it enough to figure out just how good it is at predicting songs that I like, but so far, I’m impressed.

Burning A Hole In My Pocket

Of all possible gift ideas in the world, for my recent birthday, my sister-in-law made the excellent choice to get me an iTunes gift card.

I love music and I love iTunes, so gift cards are always greatly appreciated. With the temptation of songs only being $0.99 each, I’ve discovered before how easy it can be to spend more money than you intended, so now, I try to never spend more money than I currently have in my iTunes account.

But now, reveling in my relative riches (after my birthday gift, I have about $30 in my account), I find myself faced with an unfamiliar problem: I can’t think of any songs I want to download.

I’ve suffered from Writer’s Block before, and a friend of mine wrote the other day about having Blogger’s Block, but this current malady that I suffer from—this Downloader’s Block—is something entirely new to me.

So here it is, the purpose of this post: what should I download?

There are certainly some genres of music that I like more than others, but on the whole, I’m pretty much open to anything. Here are the only limitations:

• I’d prefer something without excessive profanity.
• I can’t stand polka music in general, and I’m really not a big Weird Al fan specifically (we can thank my cousin Will for that).
  

That’s it! Give me some ideas. What’s something you like, or something you think I might like?