Re-Imagining Worship: My Top 5 “Alt-Worship” Spotify Playlist

OK confession:  I’m not a big fan of worship music.  I know, not a shock to many who know me well but when I drop that little nugget into a conversation with new Christian friends the reaction can run the spectrum of a full on spit take to that shifting awkwardness of not even knowing where to begin to respond.

It’s true though, I find the the entire worship culture…well…

boring.

The songs are repetitive, saccharine, largely meaningless and seem to promote a relationship and understanding of God Jesus seemed constantly trying to correct.  Namely that God isn’t some distant Zeus like character on a mountain throne but a father and that by his Spirit we are able to call him “Abba” (Papa)

I have three kids.  Do I foster a proper relationship with them and reveal who I am as their father by suggesting it might be a good idea if they spend 30-40 minutes once a weeks singing to me?  You know, songs about what a great Dad I am, that I am better and more loving than all the other dads, that there is no Dad like me, and that I am worthy of their adoration and praise?  (And then maybe lift their hands to me or roll around on the floor a bit)

Probably not…

Now don’t get me wrong.  I think music is a powerful tool and the singing of songs together in any corporate setting, particularly a church, can have a dynamic positive effect.  Jesus and the disciples sang a hymn together at the Passover (Matt 26:30) and Paul & Silas sang hymns together while in prison (Acts 16:16-40) but other than some metaphoric language used in Revelation, there is no New Testament underpinning for anything that justifies what has morphed into what we almost singularly refer to as worship in the church today.

If anything Romans 12 would suggest what God sees as worship is how we interact in the world with others and has little, if anything, to do with what we commonly refer to as worship.

That’s why I think it’s time for a bit of ALT- Worship.  In fact I’ve started a new playlist on Spotify with those songs that that do help me connect to God and those around me. The songs that tend to galvanise people in a group setting yet have all the qualities I feel traditional worship lacks. Songs that give voice to:

• Admiration and Anger
• Certainty and Confusion
• Hope and Despair
• Faith and Doubt

Songs that remind us how insignificant and yet infinitely precious we are, that we are loved and in the end everything matters!

So here are the first five Alt-Worship songs on my Spotify playlist:

1. Like Humans Do – David Byrne

I’m sure in time more songs by David Byrne will be making my Alt-Worship playlist.  The man is a master of lyrical existential insights.  Yet Like Humans Do tops my list because watching him perform it live at the Clockenflap music festival was the closest I came last year to that feeling of a corp

David Byrne

orate worship time as thousands of us sang along together “I’m breathing in, I’m breathing out…like Humans do”

For millions of years, in millions of homes
A man loved a woman, a child it was bornIt learned how to hurt and it learned how to cry
Like humans do

I’m breathing in
I’m breathing out

2. O My God – The Police

Synchronicity is my favorite album from The Police and was Sting’s last project in the band before going solo.  Classics like Every Breath You Take and King of Pain seem like the likely choices to make the Alt-Worship playlist yet it’s the honesty of O My God that puts it here

Oh my God you take the biscuit
Treating me this way
Expecting me to treat you well
No matter what you say
How can I turn the other cheek
It’s black and bruised and torn
I’ve been waiting
Since the day that I was born, fill it up, fill it up, fill it up

Take the space between us
Fill it up some way
Take the space between us
Fill it up, fill it up, fill it up, fill it up, fill it up, fill it up

3.  Wonderwall – Oasis

One doesn’t quickly think of the Gallagher brothers when musing worship songs yet strike up the opening chords of Wonderwall and watch a room full of people stop what their doing to sing out loud together.  I was at a New Year Day Bar-B-Q a few years back and joined a rooftop of my local community singing:

And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I
Would like to say to you but I don’t know how

Because maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me

Those lyrics have Alt-Worship written all over them

4. What’s Up? – 4 Non Blondes

Like Wonderwall any cover band that breaks into 4 Non Blondes What’s Up?  can quickly galvanise a pub full of people ignoring the band into an impromptu Alt-Worship service.  I was in Santiago de Compostella at the end of one of my walking pilgrimages and have the most delightful memory of a street busker kicking this out right near the Cathedral.  It had me stop and sing “What’s going on”

Twenty-five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination

I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
For whatever that means

And so I cry sometimes
When I’m lying in bed just to get it all out
What’s in my head
And I, I am feeling a little peculiar

And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream from the top of my lungs
What’s going on?

5. Is This the World We Created? – Queen

Freddy Mercury and Brian May doing this acoustic classic at Live Aid was the cherry at the top of what is widely thought of as perhaps the greatest rock performance ever.

Wooh, is this the world we created?
We made it all our own
Is this the world we devastated, right to the bone
If there’s a God in the sky looking down
What can he think of what we’ve done
To the world that he created

Plus, did I mention Freddy Mercury sang it?

Anyhow, that’s the first 5 songs on my Spotify Alt-Worship playlist.  What songs would you add?

Peace,

Steve