Trailing just behind Taylor Swift's "1989" on Billboard 200 this week at a lofty #2 position is Pentatonix's "That's Christmas to Me." In a climate where record sales are sloughing as if they were stately monuments, "That's Christmas to Me" fluidly moves thousands of copies each week, easily making "That's Christmas to Me" this year's best-selling seasonal album.
moreHunter Thompson has a way of placing mortality under the microscope. Calling to mind the words of Moses from Psalm 90 to "number our days," this 5-track EP gives pause to our hurried lives.
moreNot everyone can do justice to the American songbook. Though by default and protocol every artist these days is churning out cover albums left, right and center, not every one of them works. Some are just embarrassingly bad, bereft of any understanding of how to carry these eternal and immortal tunes with new and yet reverent nuances.
moreWorship leaders are often in a vexing bind when it comes to Christmas. On one hand, with only four Sundays between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it is a tall order for them to introduce brand new Christmas worship songs within such brevity of time. This is because once when the congregation starts getting familiar with these new worship paeans, the season is already over.
moreHillsong Worship, the worship team that first brought the Australian church to an international level, is not about to toppled by its younger counterpart Hillsong Young and Free (Hillsong Y&F).
more"The London Sessions" is Mary J. Blige's cross-continental affair. Incarnating the adage that the grass is greener on the other side, Blige has traveled across the pond, lived in London, partnered with the best of the Brit soul lovers and now we have "The London Sessions."
moreElevation Worship's brand new album "Wake Up the Wonder" is the perfect specimen for a study of what is going right and what is seriously erring in modern worship music today.
moreIf Momford and Sons have first cousins in contemporary Christian music they would be Rend Collective. Rend Collective brings to the Christian music genre a raw streak of rootsy Americana that borrows the expressiveness of neo-hippie rock and the rustic folk of Guy Clark & Emmylou Harris; music that is far more gritty, organic, and raw than vast swath of today's country music.
moreAs soon as we hear the moniker Hillsong two things come to mind. First, known for providing the songbooks for a large swath of churches today, many of would think of their bombastic hooky anthems such as "At the Cross," "Worthy is the Lamb" and "Hosanna." Second, they are known for their live worship recordings. However, their latest Christmas offering "We Have a Savior" certainly challenges such preconceptions
moreNo two albums of Kristin Chenoweth are alike. Though she has been matriculating within the school of Broadway, musicals and TV circuits in her earlier years, when she was offered a recording contract, she puts her creativity on first gear. Her debut album for Sony Classic is as about as cliché as you would have expected from Chenoweth.
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