#74 WAITING HERE FOR YOU - Christy Nockels

Wow. There's nothing that can be said about the wonderfulness of Christy Nockels that hasn't already been said. Of course that won't keep me from filling up a whole blog post with my useless facts, inane chatter, and irreverent humor. Christy Nockels is so important to the modern worship movement that she needs to be the SOMETHING of modern worship music.

For those of you who are new here, what that means is that she's so important that she needs a secular music analog. For example, here - #96 One Desire, I said that Hillsong is the Beatles of modern worship music. Here, - #90 Your Name is Holy, I opined that the album Hungry is the Sgt. Pepper's of modern worship. And finally here - #84 The Noise We Make, I decided that Chris Tomlin is the Bono of modern worship music. (1)

(1) Of course you can be sure that all these assertions are backed up with meticulous research and impeccable fact-checking. Or at the very least, they are up to the exact same standard as the rest of this blog. Which of course is to say, a pretty low standard.

It took me some time to figure out who Chris Tomlin equates to. Heck, I think I might have even changed it from Bono to Beyonce per a friend's suggestion, but who knows anymore? The truth is, I steadfastly refuse to stand by anything I've said here in this blog previously. It's much easier that way, trust me.

Christy Nockels, however, wasn't hard at all. You see, a few years ago I got a new computer and was finally able to do several things at once on the computer. This led me to listening to a bunch of worship music stations, etc on the internet. Since I already owned a ton of good worship music, I decided I wanted to find places where I could listen to songs and artists that weren't played regularly on local Christian radio. (2)

(2) Believe it or not, kids, until about 2 years ago, I had a computer that had just 2 GB ram and an 80 GB hard drive. I couldn't do more than one thing at once for fear that everything would freeze up. I think my browser was Netscape Navigator. My home page was Ask Jeeves. The computer was manufactured by Coleco. OK, that's enough, I think you get the picture by now. 

Up until 2013, this was my computer. "How about a nice game of chess?"

Once I updated to a 21st century computer, I was able to explore new music. It seemed that every time I heard a cool song that I wasn't real familiar with, it turned out to be by Christy Nockels. It's that VOICE, that's what it is. When you hear Christy sing, you just immediately think 'worship'. Without getting too deep into the theological here, you might even say that her voice is worship.

I'm not sure if there is a male equivalent in modern worship. If I had to guess, it might be Matt Redman, or maybe Martin Smith of Delirious. As soon as you hear just one word from those guys, you just think worship music. And it's the same way for Christy Nockels. This is why it's easy for me to find the secular music analog for Christy Nockels, so here goes:

Christy Nockels is the Donna Summer of modern worship music.

Yep, I'm pretty firm on this one: Christy Nockels is the Donna Summer of modern worship music. This is actually a pretty brilliant analogy, if I do say so myself. Of course, my objective brilliance is severely lessened by the fact that approximately 87% of my readers have no idea who Donna Summer is. Read a book, people.

You see, kids, Donna Summer was the Queen of Disco. Oh crap, I just realized that now I probably have to explain what disco was. Disco was probably the greatest musical style in the entire history of musical styles, ever. Like, ever. However, just like great minds such as Shakespeare, Einstein, and Doc Emmit Brown; disco wasn't understood in it's time.

And because the people of the 1970s (often called 'The Greatest Generation'), lacked the sophistication to understand the mind-blowing nuances of disco music, this wonderful genre ended up having a short shelf life. It was sort of like The Macarena. Everyone was doing it for a couple of weeks, but after that, you just looked silly. Anyway, that's the brief history of disco, and Donna Summer was the Queen of it.

When you think 'disco', as I do several times a day, you think of Saturday Night Fever, doing lines of cocaine, guys wearing huge bell-bottom trousers, and people wearing platform shoes that had mini fish tanks in them with actual fish. (no kidding, this was a real thing).

Ok, seriously, how do you feed them?

But even as disco itself is remembered as nothing more than a passing fad, and even now as it's only talked about for it's weirdness and excesses, Donna Summer rose above all that. While most of what the disco era was is mocked and laughed about these days, Ms. Summer is remembered fondly as a great, GREAT singer, wonderful performer, and great person. If you ever happen to be listening to a 70s station and a Donna Summer classic comes on, you immediately think, "This woman IS disco".

And that's why I say that Christy Nockels is the Donna Summer of modern worship music. (Admit it, you forgot that this post was about Christy Nockels, didn't you?) As soon as you hear one of her songs start, you think, "Ah, now THIS is worship music". Donna Summer may have been one of the original 'divas', in a good way; and Christy Nockels may also be considered a diva, in a good way, of modern worship music.

Sadly, I've really gotten off the rails here with my love of Donna Summer and disco, and I've pretty much ignored Miss Christy, but rest assured we'll have some time later in the countdown to do a more in-depth examination of her career. As a bonus I'm going to put an extra Christy Nockels song in Andy's Extras 2, and as a Super-Duper bonus, I'm including a Donna Summer classic as well.

For now, enjoy Christy Nockels beautifully singing Waiting Here For You:

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