Over to Russ to explain how the power ballad resulted from a period of optimism and a recurring love of minor keys… It was their third UK Top 40 single, but the song also reached the Top 10 in 1991 when it was covered by the American hard rock band Kiss, after featuring on the soundtrack to the movie Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. The Hertfordshire-born musician’s outstanding back catalogue has been mined and recorded by everyone from Rainbow to Hot Chocolate to America to Elkie Brooks to Three Dog Night and many, many more.īut his own first hit record was 1973’s God Gave Rock And Roll To You with Argent, the British rock group he founded with the former Zombies keyboardist Rod Argent. Since You’ve Been Gone, You Can Do Magic, New York Groove, So You Win Again, No More The Fool, Liar… Russ Ballard’s songs are on permanent heavy rotation the world over. Ultimately, Payne argues, CCM spurred evangelical activism in more potent and lasting ways than any particular doctrine, denomination, culture war, or legislative agenda had before. The feelgood anthem that became a hit in two decades for two different bands was inspired by Cliff Richard Throughout, she draws on in-depth interviews with CCM journalists, publishers, producers, and artists, as well as archives, sales and marketing data, fan magazines, merchandise-everything that went into making CCM a thriving subculture. Yet Payne argues that these cultural products were sources of power, meaning, and political activism. For many outside observers, evangelical pop stars, interpretive dancers, puppeteers, mimes, and bodybuilders are silly expressions of kitsch. In this book, Leah Payne traces the history and trajectory of Contemporary Christian music in America and, in the process, demonstrates how the industry, its artists, and its fans shaped-and continue to shape-conservative, (mostly) white, Protestant evangelicalism. And yet, today, the industry is a shadow of what it once was. Contemporary Christian artists were appearing on Top 40 radio, and some, most famously Amy Grant, crossed over into the mainstream. By the 1980s and 1990s, CCM had grown into a massive, multimillion-dollar industry. But by combining the rock and folk music of the counterculture with religious ideas and aims of conservative white evangelicals, Jesus freaks and evangelical media moguls gave birth to an entire genre known as Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). Known as the Jesus Movement-and its members, more colloquially, as "Jesus freaks"-the revival was short-lived. Yet when a revival swept through counterculture hippie communities of the West Coast in the 1960s and 1970s a new alternative emerged. Well, maybe not that unlikely-the long hair, the beards, the sandals-but still a far cry from the buttoned-up, conservative Protestantism they were striving to preserve. Parents and pastors launched a crusade against rock music, but they were fighting an uphill battle. The raucous sounds of Elvis Presley and Little Richard seemed tailor-made to destroy the faith of their young and, in the process, undermine the moral foundations of the United States. Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Global Public HealthĪn entertaining history of the soundtrack of American evangelical Christianityįew things frightened conservative white Protestant parents of the 1950s and the 1960s more than thought of their children falling prey to the "menace to Christendom" known as rock and roll.The European Society of Cardiology Series.Oxford Commentaries on International Law.
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