Contemporary Christian Music

CCM expresses Christian faith in the vocabulary of mainstream pop, rock, folk and ballad. Production foregrounds drums, electric guitar and big-room reverb more than traditional hymnody does, and lyrics handle prayer, salvation, devotion and encouragement in direct rather than poetic language. Amy Grant's 1980s catalog has the bright sheen of MTV-era pop; Hillsong Worship's anthems are written to be singable by ten thousand people at once, with simple harmonic motion and long sustained vowels.

CCM grew out of the late-1960s and 1970s American 'Jesus Movement', a youth-driven evangelical revival that adopted rock and folk music against the wishes of older churchgoers. Dedicated Christian labels, the rise of Christian radio formats and a parallel touring and bookstore infrastructure built CCM into its own industry by the 1980s. From the 1990s onward, Australian congregations — most influentially Hillsong Church in Sydney — exported a globalized worship style that now dominates evangelical churches worldwide.

Listen for how CCM songs are engineered for two purposes at once — to work as radio pop and to be singable by a non-musician congregation. Hooks tend to be melodically simple, with long held notes on the most emotive words. Production polish goes hand in hand with theological directness in the lyric.

For 1980s CCM, Amy Grant's 'El Shaddai' (1982); for her pop crossover, 'Baby Baby' (1991). For the modern worship template, Hillsong Worship's 'Shout to the Lord' (1993) and 'Lead Me to the Cross' (2006).

CCM is both a genre and an industry: songs are evaluated not only on their musical merits but on whether the lyrics are theologically usable and whether they sit in a key a congregation can sing along to.