My Own Little World

Over the past several years, I've really grown to love Hillsong United. Their 2013 and 2015 releases, Zion  and Empires , respectively, have made me regain hope for the worship music industry, proving that mainstream worship music can actually be well-written and musically conscious. That being said, I was really looking forward to whatever they did next and was surprised when they announced Wonder  less than a month ago for release this weekend. The title track was so ridiculously infectious that, despite some slightly vague lyrics, I couldn't help but put it on repeat as I waited for the other tracks to be released. I don't know if it was my wild anticipation or my high expectations, but Wonder  actually lacks a little bit of enchantment now that I've listened to it in its entirety a couple of times. United has done a great job over the past couple of years of carefully cultivating a specific sound for each of their releases, with Zion  being extremely energe...

Hillsong UNITED has just released a new album. That sentence alone conjures various reactions, ranging from groaning to scoffing to cheering. Whatever the reaction, a new album from the Aussies is a momentous occassion in worship music. The Hillsong group of bands is arguably the best known and most sung of the major worship artists. Until 2013, most music critics did not want anything to do with any of the Hillsong bands, however, as they typically released what seemed like the same album over and over again. Then came Zion . The release of Zion  changed everything. A formerly complacent band radically challenged the format of the genre which they arguably defined and made for the first time in their career true art. This made it impossible for critics to at least like Zion . It appealed to the hipster crowd musically while still retaining Hillsong's hallmark songwriting. Enter Empires , UNITED's second studio album since transitioning into an indie-ish band. This de...

This review has taken me a long time to be able to write. Looking back I can find only one reason for this. This is the only time I have ever guessed about an album and been dead wrong. I'm glad I was wrong, too. As you can see from my past two posts, I don't have the most welcoming view of Hillsong Live (now Hillsong Worship). To me, it felt like they made re-recordings of the same album every year, slightly changing the instrumentation in the process. Lyrically, this album does not differ greatly from previous Hillsong albums. For the most part, the album's lyrics focus on Christ and His sacrifice and how His Name is the Name above all other names. This is essential for a worship album, as the focus needs to be on God and not those worshiping Him. "Broken Vessels (Amazing Grace)" is a prime example of this. Besides the fact that it uses the lyrics to the hymn's first verse in an extremely clever way, it references the fact that we are broken people t...

In my last post, I covered all the reasons why I did not like Hillsong for the longest time. Those of you that are Hillsong fans may be wanting to ask me a lot of questions, but I am confident that many of them will be answered in the following words. Leading worship over the past few years has shown me one of the coolest things about Hillsong: it is an incredible resource for churches around the world. No other worship band that I know of could write at least ten new songs each year and not have them all be awful. If a church were to use Hillsong exclusively as their song catalog for worship, they would have an extremely robust selection of songs to sing. My perception of United has begun to change over the past couple years. Specifically, their 2013 studio album Zion is what changed my view of Hillsong in general. On Zion was a collection of songs that were God-focused and wildly original in their music. It was almost unrecognizable as a Hillsong album due to their house...

As my few regular readers will note, I have started to preface my music reviews with a little background on my thoughts going into my listening of an album. In preparation for my review of Hillsong Worship's (formerly Hillsong Live) upcoming album No Other Name , I felt that I needed to elaborate on my thoughts surrounding the Hillsong brand due to some past comments I have made about their music. This is the first part of a two-part series on this topic. Hillsong is probably one of the most famous names in Christian music, but most casual listeners will not realize that Hillsong is actually the name of a megachurch in Sydney, Australia, that identifies with the Pentecostal tradition. Within the church, there are several different bands that all serve different purposes. For this first writing, I will limit them to Live (the main worship team) and United (the youth band). There are and were many more, but these are the only two that have stood the test of time and stayed releva...