As someone who used to sell quite a bit of Southern Gospel music, there is a singular demographic that it actually appeals to: Old white people. At least from my anecdotal evidence. Strangely enough, the fact that its principle audience didn't pirate it during the internet music revolution is what managed to keep it afloat despite its lack of change for ... several decades. There are people who like its musical stylings no matter how bogged down it is, and in fact, its principle artists are often encouraged
not to innovate in any way. They will by the CDs, DVDs,
video cassettes, no matter how bad it is. And they will complain like nothing else if it isn't ... Southern Gospel. Basically.
Plus side:
This is more what the future of music you'll get from white Christians over the radio is going to sound like once the people who grew up on Audio Adrenaline, Delirious?, and DC Talk hit their 40s and beyond.
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While I'm on this topic that I could go on forever about in my own varying emotions about -- Christian music of varying sorts -- I shall express a little bit of long pent up rage. Well, it started with bemusement, and has slowly over time built up into a rage.
Let's set the scene. 2001. I'm an angsty Christian teenager who is addicted to Christian rock, making my own games, watching TV, not having a whole lot of social life. There's this rising starlet of the Christian rock scene, Jennifer Knapp, and she's working her way up there onto my absolute favourites of all times list.
This song in particular helps get me through this dark period in my life, which I later heard described as "easily the best distillation of the entire passion play into a single song." Which I tend to agree with. Anyway, basically, after she released this album she disappeared. Not "died" disappeared, but she took a very long break which convinced me that she was never going to make music again. This made me pretty sad, but the years passed, and I still had the music she made while she was active. Music that held up over time.
Let's fast forward to 2009 when I am far more liberal than I've ever been, and I get the news that Jennifer Knapp came out of the closet when a coworker walks into the receiving room and listens to me playing Jennifer Knapp over the sound system. It brings us both into a discussion of her music, fun times were had. But that got me looking into the announcement because I realized that that would probably have explained her disappearance. Then I found out that
she was going to make another album.
You have no idea how long I waited to hear these sweet tones. Unfortunately, as you can probably tell by the view count there on Youtube, not a whole lot of her original audience agreed with me. And 2014 is here, and she's working on another album which I am anticipating because I plan to buy it. But my rage at the fact that her fanbase, people who I am forced to associate my name with due to a common creed, are so stupid, STUPID about sexuality in general, that she's not selling as much as she really should be. Even a couple of other Christian artists made announcements of their standing in solidarity with her, and it did ... nothing. :|
And the longer this goes about the same the more pissed off I get about it, because fuck everything, I thought things were going to get better faster. But it's a slow slog, and it's a shame, and ugh.