I read this directly after finishing Daniel Radosh's riveting "Rapture Ready," and while I felt this effort wasn't quite as deft as that book (perhaps in part because the author had trouble getting many subjects to talk to him), it was still a compelling read. Where Radosh covers pretty much the whole landscape of American evangelical pop culture, Beaujon focuses almost entirely on the music industry. His detailed history of the development of "Christian rock" and its variants is enlivened by his interactions with both the industry's artists and producers and (to a lesser degree) its target audience. I particularly enjoyed his parallel exploration of integrational "crossover" artists such as David Bazan, Sufjan Stevens and Aaron Weiss, who have devoted followings despite alienating many evangelicals with, for example, songs about struggling with doubt or which contain profanity. And while the author -- a secular rock critic -- gets justifiably snarky on occasion (and there is much about which to snark in the Christian music industry), he writes with touching honesty about seeing many of his prior assumptions turned upside down during this journey.

It's hard to sum up this book, but I recommend it to anyone who is (like me) weirdly fascinated by the truly bizarre aspects of U.S. Christian pop culture, especially outsiders seeking to understand it. Many evangelical fundamentalists will no doubt find it offensive, but if you're an open-minded Christian curious about how this culture really looks to someone from the outside, I think you'll enjoy it. YMMV.

I enjoyed this look at Christian music. The author isn't Christian, which makes me feel like I can trust him more- that make sense? Beaujon might actually may have been more forgiving than I would have been if I did this. He goes through the history of the genre thoroughly and studies modern groups and attends festivals and such. The book makes the executive of Tooth and Nail look like a bastard, which isn't surprising- he is a record executive after all. He seemed too obsessed with image. Beaujon sure likes David Bazan of Pedro the Lion, though. This made me wish I kept more of my father's old CDs. Even made me wanna listen to a couple Sandi Patty songs. I can't believe I said that. I I felt the interviews didn't add much, but otherwise informative and fun.

This book was published at the peak of my CCM obsession. I was 15 and attended every Christian music festival in NorCal that year, plus at least 10 concerts.
So, I’m sad to say the read was a disappointment. The writing is dry and I struggled to stay focused. The author himself wasn’t “in” the industry and that shows in the pointless, boring, repetitive interviews he conducts mostly with men who worked behind the scenes with obscure bands I personally never heard of (and I still know a weird amount about the bands that were Big in the 90’s-00’s). Like, you couldn’t at least interview the actual youths who were active in the culture at the time? That would have been 100x more insightful and interesting.

I grew up in the world of Christian rock, and it’s amazing to read a secular account of the honestly strange world that is the industry.

Beaujon writes with respect for his subjects, but also with humor, honesty, and amazement at some of the absurdity involved in the world of Christian music. As someone who grew up in the Christian rock universe and has almost entirely moved on, this was a moving read that left me happy, nostalgic, and more sympathetic towards Christian rock than I have felt in some time. If you grew up like I did and want to read an outside take, read this book and reflect on your experiences. If you are coming from an outside perspective, read this book and marvel at an entertainment industry that exists as some sort of parallel to “mainstream” pop culture.

I recommend it.

Interesting look at the Christian music industry from the perspective of a non-Christian music critic.

2.5 stars

I had to read this book for a class last semester. It looks at Christian rock as a subculture, not necessarily through a religous lens. It is well-written book, and the author, Andrew Beaujon, does a good job of being that annoying journalist and prying into everything to give a real feel to readers not familiar with Christian Rock and Christians in general, in America.

From a Muslim point of view, this could be lent to the growing Muslim entertainment industry to use as lessons in the formation of a religous subculture in America, as well as different perspectives and views of religous subcultures by Americans.

Author Andrew Beaujon's patience and tenderness toward his culturally bizarre subject, Christian Rock, is quite an achievement. I would say that he was actually far more forgiving and accepting than I would have been with a similar topic. Perhaps it's the amount of baggage that I, who have been too close to much of this, carry.

This is no masterpiece of reporting, but it's a fair, enjoyable, gracious look at one strange, multifaceted movement.

I just loved this book. I started reading it as part of my background reading for a book chapter I'm writing, but once I'd started I could hardly put it down. Though I don't think the title or the subtitle are particularly helpful, the actual content is really fascinating. Andrew Beaujon (writer for Spin magazine) presents more of an outsider's view of Christian rock, since he is not himself not a Christian, and he didn't know much about Christian rock at all before starting this major project. That's a positive thing--at least, the way Beaujon builds his narrative. What he presents is not a year-by-year chronology of Christian rock--in fact, the book is at times frustratingly unsystematic in its approach--but instead it's more of a guided tour through his year of immersion in the American Christian music scene. Throughout the book he is fair toward everyone he meets (though I thought it was a little tacky to include some verbatim emails from a couple of his contacts), and he concludes his research with a genuine appreciation of the good things that he discovered. He's not converted--but what he writes in his Afterword is as Christian a perspective on the world as you'll find (just without acknowledgment of the full identity of Christ).

What makes the writing so addicting is that it is a style that I think of as "top-shelf blogging" (and I most definitely don't mean "top-shelf" in the way that some Brits might understand it). It's a style that is awfully difficult to pull off, as evidenced by the large amount of it in the world that I generally find excruciating. With Beaujon, it just seems to flow naturally: casual and conversational, but not obnoxious. As I read, I shared some particularly good lines (especially about attending a large worship gathering during the Gospel Music Week in Nashville) aloud with my wife, and I texted lines here and there to one of my best friends who I knew would appreciate it.

At the start, Beaujon traces the roots of Christian rock, from its 1970s origins in the Jesus People movement, the Explo Festival, and all of the disenfranchised people who were finding a new path into Christianity through the music and ideals they loved. I was interested to see the grungy origins, and how a lot of early Christian rock was focused on social justice issues. By the time I knew much about Christian music, it was the much more sanitized 1980s, dominated by just two performers: Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith. One of the benefits of this hindsight perspective on Christian rock is to see just how quickly "tradition" changes. The things that completely define American Christianity in one era might be very different just a decade later. That actually gives me a lot of hope, in the midst of a lot of frustration with where the evangelical church is right now.

Following that introduction--which, for me, was a delightful tour of a lot of things I hadn't thought about in a long time, along with other albums and personalities that I never knew about--Beaujon's history becomes less direct. There's not much in his book about the late 80s through the 90s. His brief mention of some Christian heavy metal in that era is surprisingly slim (which I only know because--and I hate to admit this--I really loved Christian heavy metal in the late 80s/early 90s). Beaujon spends a lot of time in the book with some kind of morose musicians (especially David Bazan of Pedro the Lion), which skews the narrative in a particular way. I don't think it's bad, but he certainly gets a more insider view of that aspect of Christian rock than he does of, say, Top 40 radio pop artists (and this skewing is largely because the managers of those Top 40 artists restricted Beaujon's access to them).

Quotes like this make me love this book:

I'm not saved and don't think I ever will be, but if such a miracle were to take place, I can't imagine anything worse than being forced to pay for my salvation by listening to worship music for the rest of my days. (158)

Thank you, Andrew Beaujon, for your honesty, graciousness, good humor, and willingness to gaze into the delights and oddities of Christian music. I hope sometime we can hang out and talk about music and faith.

a book on christian music written by a non-christian. very journalistic. brutally honest. i was really excited about reading this book, getting a detailed, honest "outsider's" view on christian music. and for the most part he did a decent job at just reporting facts. but every once in a while he would go off on some subject and be complete jerk. most of the time when he did this he gave his opinion in a way that sounded like he was giving factual information when he wasn't. but there are some great quotes and good information in here.

I remember reading this book when it VERY first came out in 2006, and I definitely connected with many of the artists he profiled in the book. 13 years later, after finishing the first draft of my memoir, I relate more to the author as he compared and contrasted what "Christian Music" claims to be and what it seems to really be. It's exactly what I needed to read as I start heavy edits of my book.

I read this in one day because it really hit on a lot things that deeply interest me. There are great interviews with artists I have grown to love. Dave Bazan has a great interview, Aaron Weiss(MewithoutYou) is sincere and weird as ever. The history of CCM is actually interesting, and seeing how Nashville came to be it's headquarters. What makes this book so good is the writing. The author is a non christian(who writes for SPIN) and is very generous with all the things he encounters. My only compliant is that Sufjan is not interviewed.