Top Worship Albums from the past 10 Years

I actually sat down to write this post with the intent of coming up with TEN worship albums that were my favorite from the past 10 years. I quickly discovered a problem: When I set my criteria for deciding, I could only come up with eight! So instead of the pithy “Top 10 from the Last 10″ I’m stuck with the my “Top 8 Worship Albums from the past 10 Years.” Not quite as snappy, is it?

So here was my criteria for deciding my favorite worship albums:

• I had to love listening to the whole album. It couldn’t include just a few tracks that I really like and then I skip the rest of the album (though I gave myself a pass if there were 2-3 songs that weren’t terribly good). This narrowed it down considerably. For whatever reason, almost all worship albums I run into are generally filled with lyrical and musical drivel except for a song or two.
• It has to stand the “test of time” litmus test. Do I honestly believe I’ll still love this album in 5-10 years.
• The worship album has to be geared towards congregational worship. In other words, the songs have to be written in such a way that a group of people could sing it together and they could follow along fairly easily. I’m not saying it has to have a killer hook, but that wouldn’t hurt their cause. This particular criteria cut out another considerable number of favorites. Mike Crawford and his Secret Siblings was down the hole, as well as Jon Foreman. Gone!
• I thought about making some sort of criteria for musical ingenuity or lyrical content and originality, but that could have pruned it to almost nothing. So, I kept it to lyrics that orient my heart to God and his coming Kingdom (whether simple and meditative or theologically complex and thoughtful) as well as pleasing to my musical ears.

This left me with eight albums. Eight. And even within that, I gave myself some wiggle room because I’m not sure any of the albums were 100% on each of those criteria. I think many people would say we’ve made great strides in the past 10 years in becoming more musically artistic within the church. I guess we have, but this process has given me a moment of pause on that thought. But what I quickly found were that some of my favorite artists (those with proper indie cred, anyway), rarely venture into the world of mainstream, congregational worship.

So…here they are. My favorite worship albums from the past 10 years (in no particular order).

1) Psalms by Shane and Shane. 2003. This was a hard one to fit into this list, though it might be my favorite of all these albums. Essentially, Shane and Shane take about a dozen Psalms and turn them into actual songs and then throw in a few other songs from passages in Job and Hosea as well. It’s the two of them killing it on an acoustic guitar and it is some of the most lyrically stimulating and moving worship songs I’ve found.

2) Alive by Ian Macintosh. 2009. This album probably couldn’t be much more different than Shane and Shane. Ian Macintosh is a cross between Sigur Ros, LCD Soundsystem and Radiohead. Ambient is something he definitely does well. Currently, it is the most listened to album of 2010 for me. While there are a few annoying tracks, overall it’s fantastic, with most, if not all, of the lyrics being slightly more meditative on scripture. However, my one caveat with the criteria I set is that this would be the hardest of any of the albums to sing in a public worship service. You could do it, but it would definitely be outside of the norm.

3) How Great is our God. Live at Passion. 2005. I feel like Chris Tomlin gets a bad rap. Granted, he’s not going to give you the most musically creative songs you’ve ever heard and his lyrical progression tends to be “V1, Pre-Chorus, Chorus, V2, Chorus, Bridge, Chorus” which is about as predictable as you can get. But come one, let’s be honest: The man can write a mean hook. And besides that, pretty much all of his best songs are coming directly from the psalms. So at worst, we’re talking about someone who writes songs from the scriptures the people in our communities like to listen and sing to, remember, and are easy to play! (Ok…I’m officially off the soap box). So Tomlin has 3-4 of his very best songs on this album, all of which are live (the whole album is live, which is good, because his studio produced stuff is awful). David Crowder, Matt Redman, Charlie Hall (blah) are also on it, with perhaps the highlight coming at the close, with Shane and Shane unleashing a staggering version of ‘It is Well.’

4) Illuminate by The David Crowder Band. 2003. Yes, his voice can be a bit grating at times, but let’s give the man a little credit…he has been trying new things musically and lyrically for more than a decade and while this probably wasn’t his most ambitious/successful experiment (I’d argue it was A Collision), this is the most accessible for congregational worship. He also happens to be one of my favorite lyricists.

5) More than Life by Hillsong United (live). 2003/4. I have to admit…I’m a little embarrassed about this one. Lyrically, you can rarely find a “band” more comical than some of the junk that Hillsong United puts out. There are 2-3 songs on this album that are downright laughable. Moreover, for every album since this one, it’s the same formula over and over again. Make and album that sounds like Coldplay and U2 had a lovechild, sound as earnest as you can, say Jesus enough times, produce a mean hook, mic the young teens screaming and singing along and you’ve got yourself a wicked seller of an album. To their credit, they put out an album like once every 9 months?? And on each album, there is probably 1-3 legitimately good songs. For me, before the Coldplay/U2 worship sound had become common place like it is today, this was the worship album that accompanied me as I found my way back to faith, so it will always have a special place in my heart. Plus, accept for those 2-3 songs, I really can put it in and listen to the whole album. That’s just not true of any other Hillsong United album.

6) Visions of Choruses by Philip Rice. 2009. No one is going to know who this is (though you can now purchase it on itunes). This is a guy I met on a trip to Oklahoma and this album is unlike any other worship album I’ve ever heard, which makes it difficult to describe. It’s definitely indie…sort of The Smiths meet Jeff Buckley meets the Arcade Fire meets the best Weezer hook you’ve ever heard. Phil’s voice is singularly unique and the lyrics are beautiful. I’m positive you haven’t heard of it, so you need to pick it up! Best song is probably “You are the King.” You can listen to the album on myspace as well by clicking here.

7) Singalong by Phil Wickham. 2008. I can’t stand his studio albums (they are sooooooo overproduced) but this is a live concert where he cranks off 15 songs and everyone knows every lyric to every song and every nuance of every note and the mic placement is quite good. Personally, I think Phil has done some really imaginative stuff with the acoustic guitar and is a great storyteller on this album. He’s doing what he does best on this album. Lastly…I got this album free. It was a free download he did. Always a bonus.

8) Hymns Ancient and Modern by the Passion Worship Band. 2004. This album probably best fulfills all criteria on the list better than any of the other albums. It takes some of the best hymns of the last 1000 years and gives them a modern spin. It’s beautifully understated and has probably been the go-to album for worship leaders looking to blend the ancient and modern elements of our faith in a gathered worship setting. This album was probably also the watershed moment where creative, blended worship became more mainstream as Gen Y (though other generations as well) sought to bring the old and the new together in a seamless way.

So that’s what I’ve got. So what do you think? Looking at my criteria, what’s missing? What would make your list that isn’t on mine?

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