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In April of this year, worship leader Krista Treadway planned a \u201cthrowback\u201d worship service with nostalgic favorites from the \u201990s and early 2000s, songs like \u201cThe Heart of Worship,\u201d \u201cShout to the Lord,\u201d and \u201cIn the Secret.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re special songs,\u201d said Treadway, who grew up with the music as a pastor\u2019s kid. \u201cThey hold such a dear place for us because they were our firsts.\u201d<\/p>\n
As songs like \u201cThe Heart of Worship\u201d (Matt Redman, 1999) and \u201cHere I Am to Worship\u201d (Tim Hughes, 1999) come back around as throwbacks for Christian millennials and Gen Xers, the music industry is in the midst of a financial sea-change focused on previous recordings.<\/p>\n
Back catalogs across the music industry are more profitable than ever<\/a>, and it makes fiscal sense for entertainment companies to market the music they control with the musicians they have already signed. So if you see a popular artist release a new recording of an old hit\u2014it\u2019s not just to tap into our nostalgia.<\/p>\n In recent years, industry giants like Capitol Christian Music Group (CCMG), which, as of 2021, claims over half the market share of the Christian music industry<\/a>, have invested more in catalog acquisitions and are seeing profits from publishing catalogs increase. In 2020, Universal Music Group (UMG), which owns CCMG, spent over $1 billion on catalog acquisitions.<\/a><\/p>\n In an investor meeting earlier this year<\/a>, UMG described its catalog as \u201cstrategic assets that we can control and [that] improve monetization within our portfolio.\u201d While catalog acquisitions have slowed since last year, the investments UMG has made in the previous few years have given the group a lucrative and diverse publishing catalog, which includes some of the most popular and widely-used contemporary worship music of the past three decades, such as \u201cOceans (Where Feet May Fail),\u201d \u201cBlessed Be Your Name,\u201d and \u201cMighty to Save.\u201d<\/p>\n Just as the industry wants to market the back catalogs for revenue, a wave of Christians who who came of age during the rise of the worship music industry and in the aftermath of the worship wars are eager to tune in and sing along. The songs from decades ago represent the soundtracks for their faith journeys.<\/p>\n \u201cThese songs hold a special place for folks of my generation,\u201d said Ian Stewart, a worship leader in northern Colorado.<\/p>\n Stewart, 35, vividly remembers the message and resonance of songs like \u201cThe Heart of Worship,\u201d which encouraged churchgoers to focus on the posture of the heart rather than the style of the music, even as churches installed new sound systems and projectors.<\/p>\n When Redman released \u201cThe Heart of Worship\u201d in the US in 1999, it quickly became a hit and helped establish a mainstream worship culture that took root in the UK and the US. The song was included in one of the first WOW Worship<\/em> albums.<\/p>\n In 2003, Redman edited a book inspired by the song called The Heart of Worship Files<\/em>, with contributions from Louie Giglio, Darlene Zschech, Brian Doerksen, Chris Tomlin, and Rita Springer.<\/p>\n From the vantage point of 2023, it makes sense that some Christians would want to revisit the worship world of 1999\u2014through private listening and congregational singing\u2014as new technologies like auto-tune<\/a> and post-pandemic standardized streaming are again reshaping worship practices. Redman\u2019s lyrics, \u201cWhen the music fades, and all is stripped away,\u201d resonate now as strongly as they did almost 25 years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cThe \u201990s was our turning point,\u201d said Treadway of her church and its relationship with contemporary worship music.<\/p>\n Treadway joined her youth group\u2019s worship band as a teen, just as her Free Methodist church in Sedro-Woolley, Washington, was making the switch from hymnals to contemporary drums-and-guitars music. As the daughter of the church\u2019s worship pastor, it had been her job to put out the hymnals on the pews every Sunday.<\/p>\n Songs like \u201cThe Heart of Worship\u201d had helped her congregation navigate the jarring cultural shift without losing focus on God.<\/p>\n For Treadway and her church today, returning to \u201cThe Heart of Worship\u201d during the throwback service was sacred. It seemed to awaken an enthusiasm for singing that she hadn\u2019t seen in a long time.<\/p>\n \u201cEven folks who aren\u2019t usually that engaged were actually singing,\u201d said Treadway.<\/p>\n Some of the contemporary worship songs that millennial and Gen X Christians remember learning as kids or teenagers have never dropped out of regular rotation for church worship leaders.<\/p>\n \u201cFor some churches, \u2018The Heart of Worship\u2019 and \u2018Blessed Be Your Name\u2019 are about as new as they get,\u201d said Stewart, who leads worship in his own nondenominational church in Colorado, as well as in churches across the West as a contractor. But even the most popular songs from the \u201990s fell off the radar for a while, and it\u2019s now becoming more common for churches to revive them. As of the first Sunday in August, \u201cThe Heart of Worship\u201d was the 37th most popular song on the Top 100 list<\/a> for Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI), and \u201cHere I Am to Worship\u201d was 27th.<\/p>\n
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