After having bought the albums Life After Death by TobyMac, Live for You by Rachael Lampa, and The Story’s Not Over by Jeremy Camp, I thought last December, “Why stop there?” Thanks to K-Love radio, not only the main station but also their 40th anniversary Birthday Blend and 2000s stations, I have heard a whole lot more songs than just “The Goodness,” “You Lift Me Up,” and “Keep Me in the Moment.” Some particular ones helped me settle upon the following picks during the month in question.
| Artist | Song(s) | Album |
| Steven Curtis Chapman | “Heaven in the Real World”, “King of the Jungle” | Heaven in the Real World |
| True Vibe | “Jump, Jump, Jump” | True Vibe |
| Kutless | “Not What You See” | Sea of Faces |
| Jeremy Camp | “Take My Life” | Stay |
| DC Talk | “Jesus Is Just Alright” | Free At Last (Remastered) |
| Hawk Nelson | “Take Me” | Letters to the President |
| Cochren & Co. | “Running Home”, “Parking Lot” | Running Home |
| Kutless | “Your Touch” | Kutless |
| Hawk Nelson | “Friend Like That” | Best of Hawk Nelson* |
*I would have preferred Hawk Nelson Is My Friend, but I couldn’t find that album on iTunes.
It’s a lot for me, even though it might be rookie numbers to a true music nerd, but it’s not even half the journey. I decided to go through 33 albums, 12 singles, and 3 EPs by artists from The Imperials to Rich Mullins to Michael W. Smith to 4Him to Todd Agnew to MercyMe to Jonny Diaz to Austin French to CAIN to Brandon Lake and a whole lot of in between. Quite a journey it was, with moments ranging from pleasant surprises to minor disappointments.
iTunes is indeed my preferred medium, even though my current smartphone is a Google Pixel. I have the Windows app on my PC (Version 12.13.1.3 at the time of writing), where I can browse local versions of the M4A files and use VLC media player to convert them into OGGs. (It might be unconventional, but it’s good for mass conversions.) I tried at first to bring in the files as they were, back when I only had my first three albums and Beat Saber OST Volumes 1-5, but on the YT Music Android app using local files, only the ones off The Story’s Not Over would play any audio. (For the rest, the duration would increase normally, but the audio was absent.) That’s part of the reason for converting to OGG in particular, another being that the file format is preferred in the context of Clone Hero and Beat Saber custom maps. In addition, I have read on the BSMG Wiki that MP3s converted from YouTube videos tend to be more scuffed than officially purchased audio files, and I started really noticing this fact while continually listening to Christian music at work. (The wiki in question says nothing about M4A, but surely the quality of that file format can’t be any worse than that of an MP3, right?) It is certainly worth noting that the resulting files have no metadata (not even the artist name), but I can live with that.
Before I elaborate upon the Christian music in question, however, there has been a secular artist on my mind as of late. While I would typically just mention the name outright, I feel like it would be more fun to keep them unnamed until my full post is ready, in favor of dropping teaser hints to allow guessing beforehand. They are a J-pop group with four (at the time of writing) anime ending themes to their name, one of which is for a short anime but has DragonForce-like drumming. Their flagship album contains full versions for three of the ending themes, although its year of release is more recent than the air dates of the anime in question. Their other releases include one single and two EPs.
So, my roadmap for the immediate future is to reveal the secular artist next month (until which I will neither confirm nor deny any guesses in the comments), and then later on, not necessarily the month after, will come the Christian “musical journey.”
À la prochaine! (Until next time!)
Vouiv-review 