Darnielle on Religious Pop Music

John Darnielle has put up a post about the new Dionne Warwick album. Most of it is sub-par, he says, but there is one track that he describes as something special:

“I suspect there are some deep spiritual truths that inform Dionne's having made this album, and I yearn to hear what they are, but I can't find them in many of the songs. But then there's ‘I'm Going Up,’ which is a duet with BeBe Winans. Suddenly - from the song's second bar, when Dionne makes her entrance - the physical nature of faith is audible: how, if you ever get even a taste of it, you feel it in your bones. And in your extremities, and in your senses, and in your reflexes. Religious music that doesn't convey this aspect of faith isn't necessarily a failure; I'm not about to condemn Gregorian chant for not being ecstatic enough. But when religious expression meets the three-minute pop song, I want it to tell me how what it has brought to the pop table is not only higher than the usual fare, but better.

“Which is exactly what ‘I'm Going Up’ is - a gorgeously syncopated bounce with a mixed-back horn section, a restrained slightly fuzzy electric guitar dipping in and ducking out, and a letter-perfect Warwick vocal that simply must be heard by people who love her style. Second run through the chorus, the way she pulls away from the tail-end of the phrase ‘in this world I've found’? That's classic Dionne. Her joining BeBe in harmony at the end of his verse? Best duet work I think I've ever heard her do; I have one whole hell of a lot of Dionne Warwick albums, but I've never thought of duet harmony as a particular strength, and I think the corpus generally supports that opinion. Even her ad-libs - another not-the-strong-suit area - are fantastic here. What happened in the the studio on this track? Was anybody filming it? And can we have, please, lots more?”

Based on my own experience, religion and the three-minute pop song should generally be kept apart. Only a few people in CCM could ever get close to doing it right—Rich Mullins comes to mind—and even then there's some baggage. Maybe it's not so bad when professionals do it, although John's take on the rest of the Warwick album indicates that even the best can easily flub the religious pop song.