Sometimes a poorly written song gets in the way of worship.
I ranted last year about how worship leaders should feel free to change lyrics until they’re appropriate. I was at the time talking about theological reasons, but the song “Hungry” has always annoyed me for aesthetic ones.
The song, written by Kathryn Scott and since performed and bundled on lots and lots of Vineyard worship stuff, has become very popular because of its sentiment: Hungering and thirsting for Jesus, coming to and waiting on him, falling on knees and submitting, etc. If you change “Jesus” to “baby” it also works as a pop song. I have no real trouble with the content.
The problem is that, as a former grammar teacher, the song violates one of the most basic rules of metric poetry. When you write those types of poems, you arrange the word stress so it creates a natural rhythm. I’ll use an example.
| ︶ | ´ | ︶ | ´ | ︶ | ´ | ︶ | ´ |
| I | wan- | der’d | lone- | ly | as | a | cloud |
| That | floats | on | high | o’er | vales | and | hills, |
| When | all | at | once | I | saw | a | crowd, |
| A | host | of | gold- | en | daff- | o- | dills… |
Wordsworth is hardly my favorite poet, but you see the point. Every other syllable is stressed so that it has a rhythm. The poet (unless not writing a metric poem) has to be good enough with the language to arrange the words so that the reader will automatically recognize a pattern—our brains are good at that—and start reading in cadence.
In music, we’d call this a beat. You can get away with more in music, because the music forces a rhythm on the singers and listeners. But if the rhythm of the words don’t match the rhythm of the music, you have what we call discordance.
For some, like me, discordance is offputting. It gets in the way of the enjoyment and the worship. It’s not a matter of doing, as many have kindly suggested, to “shut up and get over it; we’re doing this song and nobody cares about your aesthetics.” If you’re one of those old fogeys who grew up on hymns and musical standards, this shows a lack of class, taste, and care about your audience.
For me, it only shows a lack of education… or wanting these words in the song so much the “rules” should be ignored, even though these “rules” are not there to frustrate writers, but to facilitate harmony. It’s a form of ego, which has no business in any form of worship.
Now, I can’t presume that Scott is an egomaniac. I am, but that’s another issue. She just wrote a song, the lyrics resonated with a lot of people, the tune didn’t exactly match rhythms, and now we sing it in church. But there’s no reason why, with a little tweaking, we can’t fix the rhythm in the only place that needs it: the chorus.
As I did:
- ♫ I’m falling on my knees
- ♫ I’m off’ring all of me
- ♫ Lord Jesus you are all this heart lives for
It still ends with a preposition, but that’s another rant.