Throwback Tuesdays: New Music of 2015 compared to that of 2005

I know it’s been a while since the last Throwback Tuesdays, yet with new albums from Kutless, Natalie Grant and Casting Crowns all releasing this coming week (Surrender, Be One and A Live Worship Experience respectively), I thought it would be fitting as a tribute to these bands to look back over the years, especially to 2005, and to see how these artists have evolved in their singing and songwriting skills. Because after all, isn’t this topical post about how songs, music, movies, TV series and the like have been influential over the times, and how they have actually stood the test of time, regardless of time itself?

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Sentimental Saturdays and Message Mondays (How Fast do we Consume Music?)

Gone are the days when you can appreciate music for what it really is- a song to be savoured, a song to be listened to again and again, with every listen a new meaning is imparted to whomever listens. With the advent of Spotify, youtube, iTunes, Amazon, Pandora and every other musical service at your fingertips, skipping songs seems to be the norm nowadays. Listening to a song to death, until another track comes along, seems to be all the rage, when in fact sometimes we are called to just sit and mull over a song more than usual. Often, we may be so hasty to move onto the next new song, that we may skip over things that God may even want to say to us. We may be in fact rushing so fast from one thing to the next (music is a clear example) that we may miss what God may have in store entirely. Which is why this new post for Sentimental Saturdays is about lament, lamenting that how we have listened to music in the past (really listening to the tracks, because without the ease of access of music, we are forced to focus on what the lyrics really mean for us as people) is sadly how listeners of music don’t listen to music now. We live in a now-centred (and me-centred) society, that any hint of anything taking longer than expected is shafted, for the new, quick and convenient.

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TOP 10 ___: Top 10 Independent Artists That Ought to be Signed to a Christian Label Next Year

julie elias

Welcome to the latest instalment of our most recent blog series Top Tens, even though this blog series hasn’t been active for a while. But to kick this comeback post off, we will share with you 10 bands we reckon you all need to be on the lookout for in the upcoming months, and artists we think ought to be signed by a major Christian label in the upcoming weeks and months ahead. Without further adieu, read on to find out which indie artist will be your next artist to be your undiscovered favourite.

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Sentimental Saturdays and Message Mondays (Fight Song)

What has been your earliest memory of your life? It may be of when you were a baby, or maybe a bit older. Maybe you were playing with your siblings, or maybe it was of a traumatic event. Whatever your earliest memory is, what is important about memories and the necessity of us all having and keeping them is in fact that at the end of our lives, our experiences will be just that- memories. We cannot contain our experiences in a box, and relive them again and again if we want to feel a happy moment. Nor can we erase the memories we long to forget. What we remember is placed there, and whether it is good or bad, hurting or healing, whatever our memories about our childhood and adulthood is at this moment, one thing is true of our memories- that what we experience, or rather, what we remember about the events we live through, will deeply shape how we are today, and shape the relationships we have, with our friends, family and even God Himself. Whether our memories of events are way different than the events themselves, memory is a powerful thing. Here in this combined Sentimental Saturdays/Message Mondays post, we’ll delve into memory, and how it is always important to affirm that whatever memory and belief we have, about our past, ought not to hold us back in our future journey and discoveries we embark upon.

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