Why worship songs aren’t singable
Some very dedicated and well-informed worship leaders and musicians are saying that today’s worship songs are not suitable for congregational singing. Andy Chamberlain, co-founder of Musicademy says
“… you songwriters out there should take more of an active role in showing the average volunteer worship team how to make their songs congregationally more singable, playable and useable”.
The answer lies in how successful worship songs happen. They rise up quickly via radio airplay. Once played on air, CD sales, downloadable chord charts, arrangements, backing tracks, inclusion in set lists and the CCLI Top 100 quickly follow. So ‘successful’ worship songs have to be created to achieve radio airplay and/or CD sales. This requires a different style of song to one suitable for congregational singing. It requires songs written and recorded to make great listening, not great congregational singing.
In tune with the congregation?
This explains why successful worship songs are pitched to maximise the dramatic vocal range of gifted artists (and the current fashion - a high tenor). That’s never going to be the right key for a congregation, which needs a community average key. Some commercial worship songs don’t even have a ‘right’ key – their written range exceeds the average vocal range, so it’s always going to be too high or low somewhere.
To quote Kenny Lamm in his authoritative blog Renewing Worship:
“… one of the greatest ‘transgressions’ of worship leaders that leads to congregational spectatorship (is) the key of the song… if songs are too high, people just stop singing.”
Album-style performance
Congregations can’t follow a melody sung with ‘groove’. The timing variations that create an expressive artistic performance are too intricate and spontaneous for massed voices to follow. But singing the melody straight on a recording (or at a concert) sounds too restrained, like you’re singing without ‘feel’. And you’re not going to get airplay or sell CDs with recordings made this way.
To quote Jamie Brown from his blog Worthily Magnify:
“One simple thing that many worship leaders could do that would immediately increase their effectiveness … would be to stay on the melody … only deviate from it when it won’t throw anybody off.”
