Here's an interesting story. And by interesting I mean specifically that it's only probably interesting to a very small subset of those who read this blog, and that subset most likely includes only me. But before we get to the (non) interesting part, I need to tell you that I got a new car this year, and that I now listen to all my music in my car via a USB flash drive. This USB stays in my car at all times and has upwards of 4,000 songs on it.
So, I'm traveling to Walmart tonight, and I tell the car to play 'Genre'/'Worship'. When I do this, my USB will play only songs that I've labeled as 'Worship'; and the way I have it set up, it will just play them in any random order. Anyway, the really important thing to remember here is that I had an onion tied to my belt.
So, as I'm leaving Walmart, whatever song was playing when I pulled in was just finishing up. I'm sitting there thinking that I have to go home and put my stuff away and start on my review of the great Hillsong song, You Said. Before I even get out of the Walmart parking lot, the next song that comes on is, you guessed it, Come, Now is The Time To Worship. No, I kid. the next song was, NO LIE, You Said by Hillsong.
Kind of amazing, right? More so when you realize that I have probably over 1,000 songs on my USB that are under the genre of 'Worship', and that any one of them could have come up. The odds of that specific song coming up at that time have to be like 1 in 20, or something like that - I might have to check my math.
The Hillsong Conundrum - Part Tres
True Fact - 'I Feel Like I'm Falling' just came on my iTunes as I write this
As I mentioned here, #105 High And Lifted Up, and here, #96 One Desire, it's tough to slot Hillsong songs on this list. Where should they go? As I was listening to You Said on the way home, I thought 'this is a great song, it could reasonably be up in the 50s or the 40s on this list. HOLY CRAP!!!! I'm NOT EVEN KIDDING - Right after I Feel Like I'm Falling finished on my iTunes, You Said came up AGAIN. This is so freakin' weird, and no one's here to see this but me. I'm freakin' out here, man.
Wow, sorry about that. Weird. I just skipped You Said and Heather Clark's Come In is playing now, so I think we're good. I'm not sure it's good to write your blog in real time, but I'm a trend-setter. Just check out my new acid-washed jeans. Maybe next week I'll turn my webcam on and live blog so everyone can watch me go through the process. On second thought, I don't want to do that, because I'd probably have to put on pants.
NOTE: I didn't just make all this stuff up, it really happened the way I said it happened. Normally, I'd be listening to Internet radio while I do my blog stuff, but they are all mostly playing Christmas music right now. Bah Humbug.
You Said gets on the list because it's a great song, but it also sort of gets on the list as a way to award a Lifetime Achievement Award to the album By Your Side. (Oh, and if I was live blogging right now, you'd have seen that it took me 4 tries to spell the word 'achievement' correctly). By Your Side came out in the great worship year of 1999 and remains one of my favorites to this day. (for perspective, 1999 was the last year that The Simpsons was funny).
By the time You Said starts to play as the 10th song on the CD, you're thinking that you've heard a pretty decent album. But then, starting at You Said, even after you've already gotten a bunch of pretty good music, you get about 27 MORE minutes of great Hillsong music.
But, unfortunately, as I mentioned here, TooLazyToLookUpWhereIMentionedIt, Hillsong's By Your Side CD is, I believe, chronically underrated. Since I need to believe that I'm right that By Your Side is chronically underrated, I did an experiment. I went to the google image search and I typed in "Hillsong album covers". After getting results that weren't very helpful because I accidentally misspelled Hillsong 'Pillbong', here's what came up. I had to zoom out on the page many times to see this. Notice how long it takes for By Your Side to come up.
Ok, sure, it may be all the way down there because it's 15 years old. But Hillsong's Blessed came out just three years after By Your Side, and it's all the way up there in row 2. I'm sticking with my assessment - chronically underrated. This is a very dense CD. By my count, I'll bet that when we used the old CDs and overheads method of worship, we did 10 of these songs during worship. By way of comparison, the average David Crowder CD yields .004 songs per CD you can use for worship. Yea, I said it, someone had to.
Those of you who know me well know that I have a pathological need to have things 'right'. The more I write up these songs, the more I realize that this list will never be 'right', and it bugs the crap out of me. In the end, I'm sure I'm going to leave off a few good Chris Tomlin songs, etc, and I'm just going to have to learn to live with that.
And it's a virtual certainty that nobody's list is going to look like my list. Some of you may think You Said should be much higher, while others are thinking 'meh, I don't like it'. So, what am I to do? I guess I'll just soldier on. Maybe at some point in the future I'll rename this blog, "100 Good Worship Songs, In No Particular Order" - that's probably more accurate. For now, enjoy the By Your Side DVD version of You Said.
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