Bad worship songs - Free! by David Ryan Cook

From time to to we examine the lyrics of worship songs. Our desire is not to mock or humiliate, but rather to honestly examine content with a view to calling forth a better worship expression.

With the great volume and variety of worship music available, none of us should have to settle for bad worship songs. We should be able to select hundreds or even thousands of top notch songs very easily.

What makes a song a worship song? Is it enough to contain words like God or holy? How about vaguely spiritual sounding phrases? Should Jesus be mentioned?

We think an excellent worship song should contain the following elements:

• A direct expression of adoration (God, you are...)
• A progression of ideas that culminates in a coherent story
• A focus on God, not us
• Lyrics that do not create uncertainty or cause confusion
• A certain amount of profundity
• A singable, interesting melody
• Allusions to Scripture
• Doctrinal soundness
• Not excessively metaphorical
• Not excessively repetitive
• Jesus is not your boyfriend

It's worth noting the most worship songs contain at least something good. That is, there might be a musical idea or a lyric that has merit. Such is the case with this song, Free.

Audio link.

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Lyrics:

[verse 1]

With every single breath

We break the power of death

We’re speaking life in Jesus name

We’re trading chains for crowns

We’ve seen the walls come down

This generation’s full of faith

[Pre-Chorus]
What was lost is forever found
To the God who saves, make a holy sound

[Chorus]
We lift up praise
We lift up praises
Who the Son sets free is free indeed
I'm not ashamed to say
I'm free

[Verse 2]
I'm never turning back
I'm on the one-way path
My every step is lеd by grace
My future's in Your hands
I'm in the promisеd land
You are the God who makes a way 

[Bridge]
Fear, shame, depression's gotta go
I'm living with the power of the Holy Ghost
Faith, joy, Your presence is my hope
I'm living for Your glory and to make You known

Overview

This song is in a shuffle style, which means it has an underlying triplet feel. This is a somewhat uncommon style for worship music, but it really works for this song. 

Melodically, nothing happens. In fact, this may be the worst melody we've ever heard. The verses consist of but a single note with a flourish at the end of each stanza. The pre-chorus does actually have a rudimentary melody, but unfortunately the chorus returns to a single note melody. And for some strange reason the best melody in the song is a non-lyric interlude consisting of a unison riff with the lyrics "nah-nah-nah." Then, another one note melody for the bridge.

Absolutely terrible.

Compounding the problems with this song is the singer, who mumbles his way breathlessly through the song. Further, the song is pitched for the high tenor range, an all-to-common flaw in contemporary worship music.

We do think the band makes the best of a bad situation by delivering an exciting performance. The production is muddy, however, inhibited by the live setting of the recording.

The Music

The song has an unusual tonal feel to it because the chord progression is not typical. The recording puts the key in A minor, yet the innovative use of chords makes the tonality somewhat ambiguous. The verses and pre-chorus proceed as follows: i - iv - VII - ii dim 7 (Am - Dm - F - Bdim7).

The chorus implies a shift to the relative major key (C). However, the III chord (E), being major, tells us otherwise. In the key of C the E chord would be minor not major, so the tonality of the song remains in Am with the E major functioning as the dominant major for the A harmonic minor scale.

This is actually rather clever. So the shuffle feel plus the interesting chord progression almost makes up for the poor melody. Almost.

The Lyrics

When we evaluate lyrics we have a habit of reading the words aloud to see if they make sense in terms of telling a story. For this song it is a mixed bag. At times it's clear the song is centered on being free (the song's title), but the lyrics wander off topic more than once. In fact, the first verse is not really about the topic at all. This verse should be setting us up to establish the premise of the song (we would hope that the song extols Jesus setting us free), but it doesn't seem to do that.

Here's the verse again:

With every single breath

We break the power of death

We’re speaking life in Jesus name

We’re trading chains for crowns

We’ve seen the walls come down

This generation’s full of faith

There is really no narrative at work here. Rather, it seems like a series of unconnected, vaguely spiritual sounding statements. Further, the lyrics are directed to the people, not God, so they are declarations or perhaps statements of testimony. 

The first two stanzas are strange. How does the songwriter break the power of death with his breath? What does this even mean? We thought Jesus set us free, not the songwriter's words:

He. 2:14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil —

There is no Bible verse we can think of that tells us we have the power to break the power of death through our breath (words?). Rather, the Bible says this: 

Pr. 18:21 The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

This verse clearly informs us we should not love this power. The power of the tongue yields fruit we will certainly eat, and generally speaking, that is not a good thing:

Ja. 3:8-10 but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. 10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be.

We recognize that certain parts of the charismatic church emphasizes the idea that our words change or create reality by blessing or cursing. This is sometimes known as "positive confession," which we believe is unbiblical. As we said, there is no Bible verse that tells us such a thing. This disqualifies the song on that basis alone .

The pre-chorus continues the vague, semi-spiritual statements. Something was lost, but not any more. We don't know what was lost based on the previous lyrics. The main reason for this stanza, we think, is because "found" will rhyme with "sound" in the second stanza. Ugh. 

And our observation is confirmed that the lyrics are directed to the people, not God, because now we are exhorted:

To the God who saves, make a holy sound

The chorus persists in describing the status of the people:

We lift up praise
We lift up praises
Who the Son sets free is free indeed
I'm not ashamed to say
I'm free

We are praising, we are not ashamed, we're free. Fantastic. Perhaps all this is true for the songwriter, but when is he going to stop talking about himself? Maybe in verse two? Well, maybe:

I'm never turning back
I'm on the one-way path
My every step is lеd by grace
My future's in Your hands
I'm in the promisеd land
You are the God who makes a way

It took three more stanzas, but finally the songwriter gets past himself and starts addressing God. What does he say to God? Well, it's about him yet again. His future is in God's hands... Not exactly profound. 

***Sigh***

We don't wish to devote much more time to the verse 2 lyrics because we simply don't know what the songwriter means by being in the promised land or how God made a way for him. We aren't inclined to speculate, and worship song lyrics should not put us in that position.

Lastly, the bridge. Will the songwriter finally have something to say about God? Nope:

Fear, shame, depression's gotta go
I'm living with the power of the Holy Ghost
Faith, joy, Your presence is my hope
I'm living for Your glory and to make You known

This seemingly unending focus on himself is getting wearying. The songwriter begins by casting out demons (from himself?), which suggests that every time this song is sung there are more demons to cast out.

The songwriter then makes another assertion about himself in the second stanza, then lists two fruits of the Spirit in combination with "Your presence." Again the songwriter is doctrinally confused, since our hope is in Jesus (1 Thessalonians 1:3) through the gospel (Colossians 1:23). 

Then the author closes the bridge with another statement about himself.

What a muddled mess.

Conclusion

We have no more to say. We absolutely cannot recommend this song.