Welcome to the latest instalment of our most recent blog series Top Tens. Last time, we unveiled 20 artists and songs that in our opinion should be included in WOW Hits 2017 next year. This time, on this expanded post, and in keeping with a similar theme, I will list 20 of my favourite songs of 2016 (in no particular order!).
TV shows can teach us a lot, you know. From entertainment to education, from comedy to drama, factual to documentary, it can evoke many emotions within whenever we as a family unit sit down every so often each week to watch our ritualistic TV show that everyone in the family is eager to watch from week to week. While it is always different from person to person, and from family to family, what the family unit can all agree on is the fond memories the TV show will impact upon whomever watches it. In this case, and in relation to the title of this blog, the cooking shows that we watch can inspire us all, not necessarily to cook like Curtis Stone, Gordon Ramsey, Jamie Oliver or even Heston Blumenthal, but hopefully to cook, to be creative in the kitchen, and to maybe express a hidden talent or two, in a way that could be as beneficial to the family as it would probably be to the person cooking.
Continue reading TV Thursdays, Food Fridays and Sentimental Saturdays – Creative in the Kitchen
How many of you like fame and adulation? Everyone? No one? Did anyone put up their hand just then? Or howabout I ask this question? Does everyone like to be told ‘well done’? Are we searching and searching, looking through the status, the fame, and friendship with others just to find out that what we’re really searching for us someone or even something to love and accept us the way that we are, and believe that the way that we are, as screwed up and messy as it can be, isn’t the way that we are going to stay? I know that question sounds like a mouthful, but just think about it for a moment. Are we living our lives in the moment, or thinking about the future? Are we focussing on our own needs (which includes the fame and adulation mind you) or are we focussing on others and what they would like to see happen in their lives? The title of the blog really hits home to me- not to us but to Your name be the glory. Have I really been living that out? If worship is a lifestyle as we have established previously, then are we really truly living as though we are not here to glorify ourselves in every aspect of our lives, but to glorify the One who gave us life and holds our thoughts, dreams, hopes, fears, despairs and everything else in His hands?
What was your favourite song growing up? The track you couldn’t live without? The one that you would play and listen to 20 times in a row just because you could? The song that still has a place and has meaning in your heart now as much, or maybe even more so, than you had then? Even if you think you didn’t have a favourite song, I’m sure you did. The one you’d catch yourself singing to because you just can’t get it out of your head. The one that has had so much impact on you when you were younger that once it starts to play now, it brings back many fond memories about your youth.
Continue reading Throwback Tuesdays and Worship Wednesdays – “Above All”
Welcome to the latest instalment of our most recent blog series Top Tens. Last time, we unveiled 10 artists and songs that in our opinion should have been included on the official WOW Hits 2016 tracklisting, but weren’t. This time, on this special post, and in keeping with a similar theme, I will take an educated guess and list 20 songs that should be shoe-ins for WOW Hits 2017. Some songs have released, so audio slides/lyric videos/music videos/song stories will be below, but others haven’t been released yet and I am just predicting based on the artist. Will these tracks be there in a year’s time? Only time will tell.
Continue reading Top Twenty Artists And Songs That Should Be Present On WOW Hits 2017!
It’s been a while since I’ve actually seen a movie. The last movie I saw was the remake of Annie, and the last movie I watched at the cinema was Guardians of the Galaxy. Since starting working full-time, I haven’t really been doing much of anything outside of work, as well as maintaining this site. Not that that is a bad thing, I really enjoy my work, yet it is on some of these days on the weekends when I become sentimental, and remember life as it once was. Rewind to ten years ago and I and my family were heavily invested in movies- often we’d travel to our local cinema a few times a year. While watching a movie as a family consisted more of watching and less of conversing and actually interacting, our times together watching a movie we all enjoyed is something that I cannot take for granted, especially now since movie-going is more of a luxury than ever.
It is only now that I have discovered what it truly means to worship in the marketplace. To glorify God in every action I do as I work rather than see worship, like I have for so much of my life, as an act of going to church on a particular day, listening to a sermon, raising my hands and singing a few songs, and then going about my day for the remainder 6 days of the week before I start the process again. I know what I have described can sound a bit monotonous at times, and I reckon it probably was, yet how I realise even more now than before that you don’t necessarily have to routinely travel to church on a Sunday morning to worship our Saviour, Father and Friend.
Continue reading Worship Wednesdays (Worship in the Marketplace)
Welcome to the latest instalment of our most recent blog series Top Tens. It’s been a while since we last posted Top Tens on this site (check out the last post here!)- last time, we explored 10 bands who have changed their sound somewhat, or ‘drastically’ over the years, through a lead singer change. This time, in light of the recent WOW Hits 2016 song reveal on Spotify (you can view the list here!), I will unveil 10 artists songs that I think should have been in within the track list of 39, but weren’t, for one reason or another.
Welcome to our first ever ‘first impressions’ review, which is not really an official full length review per se, but rather an early collection of succinct and insightful thoughts. While we aim to hopefully post First Impression Reviews every week, we will at least write these pieces every fortnight (because we have to take into consideration things in our lives that may unexpectedly come up, right?), in anticipation of a review of a high profile album that we will be unveiling the week after. This week, our first instalment is peering using a metaphorical microscope at TobyMac’s 6th solo album **THIS IS NOT A Test** which releases August 7th. So let’s dive in and see whether this new album is worth our while taking a listen to!
Continue reading TobyMac – **THIS IS NOT A TEST** (First Impressions Review)
I know around the world it’s Saturday, yet this topic has been brewing in my head for a while. And as I collide TV Thursdays with Futuristic Fridays together in this mega-post of sorts, I’ve come to discuss a topic that is quite hot right now- especially with the rise in the amount of sci-fi human-type shows and movies lately (Terminator, Orphan Black, Bicentennial Man, Extant etc.). What does it mean to be a human? Laughing, talking, thinking, expression of emotions, having the ability to discern right from wrong, being able to make sound decisions that will affect the lives of others as well as themselves? Or how about just being, being able to feel- the good and the bad, the joys and highs of emotion and the low valleys of despair, all the while knowing that God created us in His own image- and that as we feel both highs and lows, we know that God has also felt the very emotions we feel?
Continue reading TV Thursdays and Futuristic Fridays (Humans- What Does It Really Mean To Be One?)