"Seven" by East West, Saturday, September 28, 2024 (repost)
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East West was a Christian hard rock band that released two albums in the early 2000s. The most successful single from their debut album The Light in Guinevere's Gardenwas the guitar ballad "She Cries," in which the band didn't scream the lyrics. East West's two releases are between two very important releases in Hard Christian Rock: P.O.D.'s Satellite and Underoath's They're Only Chasing Safety. The band's follow up, Hope in Anguish was produced much better than TLiGG. The grungy sounds of slow songs and the gut-punching screams of the heavy songs met the drums, effects petals, and truly depressing lyrics--dealing with addiction, child abuse, and the music business. Four of the songs--three of the non-screaming tracks--made their way to Christian Rock radio. East West was a band that showed that they could write a hit and have a heavy album.
I COULD NEVER REALLY FIND THE ANSWERS. Three years after the release of Hope in Anguish, East West dissolved. Lead singer, Mike Tubbs had become disillusioned with modern evangelical Christianity as witnessed both in and outside of the Christian music scene. By 2008, Tubbs converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, rejecting contemporary Christian practices in favor of tradition. In an interview with Ancient Faith Radio, Tubbs talked about how modern Christianity led him to the point nihilism. Hope in Anguish seems to be talking about that faith journey to some extent. In the song "Seven," the speaker "could never really find the answers" which were "always locked in something so close." Tubbs sings about "the ones who consume" whom he is "becoming just like them." When I was growing up, I assumed this song was about drug or alcohol addiction; however, this consumption could be anything from fashion to faith. But the biggest question of the song is: who is you? The speaker can't find the answer and "just assumed it was you," but he also fears that this hellish state he is in "will find its way to you." Is it salvation? Is it nihilism? Is it just utter frustration at failing to solve the mysteries of the universe? Either way, this song encapsulates an inability to see beyond one's prison cell, a truly relatable topic--but not one that's left so raw in Christian music.
AND I CAN READ THE STAINS INSIDE YOUR MIND. Joseph Campbell writes this truly horrifying line in his magnum opus, The Hero with a Thousand Faceswhen talking about the difference between comedy and tragedy: "The happy ending is justly scorned as misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved" (19). Every fiber of my Christian upbringing wants to shout that Campbell is wrong. And yet, he states: "the world, as we know it, as we have seen it." We have not seen anyone transcend death with our own eyes. We may hold a faith that death is not the end, but on earth, everything ends. At sixteen years old, I felt I had the answer. I could listen to nihilistic music and say, with a childlike faith, "You just need to pray harder and get your mind on other things." Still, listening to Hope in Anguish in my car on the rare occasion when a girl from school invited him to see a movie with a bunch of people, wasn't great for my social anxiety. Somehow I believed that this blind faith in God would make him popular among the Christian kids. But as every good tragedy ends with the crucifixion of our hearts, the tragedy of kids who haven't been socialized and reinforce weird religious piety with nihilistic emo songs is they don't naturally make friends.
Before " Shape of You ," Ed Sheeran was known primarily as a singer-songwriter. His albums + and X took clear influence from The Beatles , Carole King , Elton John , James Taylor , and the ballad writers of yesteryear. But he had a knack for throwing in a few rap bars along the way. With every record, Sheeran gained more acclaim. His sophomore record produced the mega Billboard #2 hit , " Thinking Out Loud ," which won two Grammys including Song of the Year. The final single from the album, " Photograph " was written in collaboration with Snow Patrol 's Johnny McDaid . Sheeran drew inspiration from his long distance relationship with singer/songwriter Nina Nesbitt (the featured musician on Kodaline ’s acoustic version of “Brand New Day” ). The two spent five months apart. They would eventually break up, but the song remains a gem on Sheeran's second best-selling record. LOVING CAN HURT . "Photograph" was the song that introduced m
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I've talked about how Carrie & Lowell , Sufjan Steven 's 2015 masterpiece, is a quintessential portrait of dealing with grief and forgiveness when I wrote about the first two tracks, " Death with Dignity ," and " Should Have Known Better ." By the third track on the record, " All of Me Wants All of You ," explores grief in a different way from the previous two tracks. As with most songs on the album, "All of Me" appears to be deeply personal to the artist. But being personal doesn't stop this track's language from being the most obscured with allusions to geography and possibly an allegory from a little-known Spanish play. ALL OF ME THINKS LESS OF YOU. There's a debate on Lyrics Genius about the meaning of this song, especially surrounding the identity of the only other character mentioned by name in this song, Manelich. Is he the one the song is about? Stevens has written vaguely about homosexual attraction throughout
East West was a Christian hard rock band that released two albums in the early 2000s. The most successful single from their debut album The Light in Guinevere's Garden was the guitar ballad "She Cries," in which the band didn't scream the lyrics. East West's two releases are between two very important releases in Hard Christian Rock: P.O.D.'s Satellite and Underoath's They're Only Chasing Safety. The band's follow up, Hope in Anguish was produced much better than TLiGG. The grungy sounds of slow songs and the gut-punching screams of the heavy songs met the drums, effects petals, and truly depressing lyrics--dealing with addiction, child abuse, and the music business. Four of the songs--three of the non-screaming tracks--made their way to Christian Rock radio. East West was a band that showed that they could write a hit and have a heavy album. 
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