“Wait for Me” by Rebecca St. James, Tuesday, October 18, 2022 (trigger warning: purity culture)

 

Rebecca Jean Smallbown, better known as by her stage name Rebecca St. James, was born in Australia but moved to Nashville, Tennessee as a teenager in the early '90s. A year before her family relocated, St. James began her singing career at the age of twelve, opening for Carman on his Australian tour. In America, Smallbone signed a record deal with ForeFront in 1994 taking the name St. James at the label’s request. 

I KNOW YOU MAY MAKE MISTAKES. Rebecca St. James became one of the biggest CCM singers. Her early records were forged in rock rather than adult contemporary, in a similar vein of the female rockers of the late '90s like Alanis Morissette and Natalie Imbruglia. But with the turn of the millennium, the popularity of female rock stars declined and electro-pop acts like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera also changed the CCM musical landscape. In 2000, St. James released her fourth record Transform, an album that utilized the synth sounds found in the bubblegum acts of the day. The lead single "Reborn" traded the heavy guitars in her prior two lead singles from her previous records "Pray" and "God" for the pads and programming. But Transform served St. James in softening her sound to be more marketable to adult contemporary. Other than the heavy electronics on the track "Lean On" written with Christian Rock band Earthsuit and the the throwback rock track to her old style "All Around Me," much of the album is adult contemporary oriented. The album's second track "Don't Worry" was a big CCM hit that has St. James sing-talking, telling a cliche story about meeting a friend at a grocery store and explaining how the singer has changed because she met God--St. James was never not a Christian. 

THERE'S FORGIVENESS AND A SECOND CHANCE. "Wait for Me," though, became one of Rebecca St. James' biggest hits. The song is about waiting until marriage to have sex. The lyrics paint a romantic picture about two partners being pulled together by God. The song was popular in the purity culture movement in Evangelical Christianity and St. James even wrote a book about sexual purity. At the time of the song's release, St. James was 23 years old, and the singer wouldn't marry until 2011. To this day, the singer talks about her struggles to stick to her convictions even into her 30s until marrying former Foster the People bassist Jacob "Cubbie" Fink, exchanging purity rings because he too "waited until marriage." To children there are fairy tales of brave princes and beautiful princesses, and to adolescents they told us the fairy tale that God was preparing the right person for me if only I did my best. It's actually the source of a lot of evangelical trauma. How many evangelical kids grow up to find out that their parents didn't wait? How many kids that "waited" are now divorced? I dreamed about marrying Rebecca St. James when I was a teenager. I never lusted after her, so that's great, right? I just thought that God was calling me to fall deeply in love with a sweet girl with a cute Aussie accent. Or maybe Jaci Velasquez. But why did Greg Long's piercing eyes cause something that I felt ashamed of. Why did I keep sinning with the Kohl's catalogue, turning to the men's underwear or swimwear section? In my 20s, I wondered what I was really waiting for. It started to feel more and more pointless. 

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