Mixtapemotions

  • “I Can Make You Feel Young Again” by Copeland, Sunday, August 21, 2022

     Copeland’s “I Can Make You Feel Young Again” seems like a straight-forward love song. The beautiful lyrics describe love, growing old together, and death in an original, poetic way. The pre-chorus makes the listener feel small in the vastness of time, contrasting the light from stars billions of light years away and the ancient ground, which will “drag us under.” But to Aaron Marsh, this isn’t a straight forward love song.

    WHEN I FEEL LIKE I’M DEAD, YOU’RE REVIVING ME. The music video (see below) makes Marsh’s vision for “I Can Make You Feel Young Again” clear. Marsh confirms the meaning of the song on an episode of Labeled podcast. The idea of the song is a man is promised youth by a siren, but the siren drowns him. Of course reading the lyrics over and over you won’t be able to get that story from the text alone. But if we place this extra-textual interpretation onto the song, it makes sense that its the song of the siren, promising the fisherman that she can make feel young again if he only takes a swim with her. Throughout literature there’s been much speculation out of what the siren’s song sounds like as most never live to tell the tale. Just this year we’ve talked about the siren’s song. In Taeyeon’s track “Siren,” she is tempted by the siren which represents an unhealthy relationship. In Lana Del Rey’s “Dark Paradise,” the siren beckons her to join her dead lover and be eternally happy together with him in a dark paradise. 

    THIS PIECE OF MY SOUL YOUR CONTROLLING. Copeland’s mermaid makes a promise similar to the legend that fellow Floridian Ponce de Leon sought, a fountain of youth that would keep him forever young. The siren makes no such promise; she merely promises to make the fisherman feel young “before [the ground] drags us under.” Does the man feel youth as he gives in to the siren’s song? Is the promise unfulfilled?  Or is the man oblivious until the final moments? And more importantly, does this correct interpretation hinder a more straightforward interpretation or even the enjoyment of the song? The promises of a new lover making his or her case to spend time together, the siren-like fixation chemistry creates when two lovers are just in to each other—isn’t that what this song is about at it’s core? And yet, like I’ve talked about in prior posts, Copeland cannot write a love song without tension. Even in today’s song, when the listener’s guard is down, the listener must stay especially vigilant. The danger in the song, though is just missing the depth, as there is nothing deadly about missing the point.   


    Read the lyrics on Genius.

    Twin version:

    Twin and original version mixed:

    Music video:

  • “Goddess of the Dayspring, Am I” by Falling Up, Saturday, August 20, 2022

    There had been hints and tendencies listeners could pick up on from earlier Falling Up records. There was the occasional strange word choice on Crashings. There was esoteric storytelling on Dawn Escapes. There were the made-up words on Exit Lights, the remix record. And for the band’s third studio record on BEC Recordings, Captiva, Falling Up delved into Greek mythology and science fiction. But for the band’s fourth record, Fangs! Falling Up presented a full concept record, this time without Bible verses in the album notes. This time fully indulging in world-building.

    SOME OF US HAVE SEEN GOLDEN ARROWS POISED. Working with frontman Casey Crescenzo of cult-status progressive indie band The Dear Hunter, the sound on Fangs! steers the band away from the electronic and Nu Metal influence Falling Up had previously embraced. Before releasing the record, lead singer Jessy Ribordy shared the story behind the concept record. Ribordy explained that the story is a prologue to the album, and the album is about what a traveler from another planet encounters. The record’s lyrical content, even being tuned into the backstory, is obscured with new vocabulary, almost coded like an Elon Hubbard novel, not that Falling Up will start a new religion. Fangs! was a polarizing record, signaling a mass exodus of fans who had witnessed Falling Up’s change in status from a massive mainstream Christian Rock band to a niche sound of sci-fi/fantasy, even stoner rock. 


    Ophelia by John Everett Millais. Source:
    Wikipedia Commons.

    HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN ME FOR FLOWERS IN YOUR HAIR? In this C. S. Lewis/ Greek mythology/ Hamlet space opera of Fangs!, we come to one of the catchiest tracks on the record, “Goddess of the Dayspring, Am I,” the ninth track on the record. In the verse, the song is kind of an Odyssey retelling of the story up until this point, with the traveler recalling the adventure accompanied by an up-tempo guitar tremolo. But the chorus slows down; it’s a lament because the Goddess of the Dayspring has died. The traveler runs his hands over her dress; his hands touching her lifeless body, pleading with her to come back to life. The goddess is partially inspired by Shakespeare’s Ophelia, Hamlet’s lover who takes her life by drowning in a river after losing her sanity. When I was listening to this record in college, I always pictured Sir John Everett Millais’s painting depicting Ophelia’s corpse floating in a calm stream with flowers surrounding the body. Jessy Ribordy’s delivery of this loss feels authentic, despite the song being a complete work of fiction. But there’s no time for the grief to last; the song picks up with rapid drumming as if the traveler runs off past the mourning courtiers to investigate. 






     

  • "Amelia Jean" by Jack's Mannequin, Friday, August 19, 2022

    It’s no surprise that Andrew McMahon lists Billy Joel as one of his biggest influences. Though separated by nearly decade from when Joel released his final record of original songs in 1993 and when McMahon’s piano-based pop punk band Something Corporate debuted in 1998. But McMahon’s Billy Joel influences seem to come alive on McMahon’s second act, Jack’s Mannequin, and their third record People and Things. 
    AMELIA JEAN, YOU WENT AND MARRIED A SOLIDER. Jack’s Mannequin’s People and Things is full of storytelling. According to an interview with Meet the Musician, People and Things is the record on which McMahon processes his survival from acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Although his previous record, The Glass Passenger, deals with survival, particularly on songs like “Swim,” People and Things deals with the aftermath–the thoughts on the road trips McMahon took across America. However, McMahon wrote several of the songs that ended up on People and Things when he was writing for The Glass Passenger. “Amelia Jean” is a song inspired by a road trip McMahon took in the middle of recording Jack’s Mannequin’s second record. Driving from California to Richmond, Virginia, picking up a thrift store keyboard along the way, the lyrics for “Amelia Jean” came to McMahon at a hotel in Richmond. The storytelling of the song is pure Americana: throwing in landmarks like “the grave of Buddy Holly” and cities and states, Nashville, “Texas wind,” “Richmond.” 

    I DROVE TO NASHVILLE WHEN YOUR SISTER CALLED, CONCERNED.  The central figure in “Amelia Jean” like Amy from “Amy, I” seem to be ghosts. Are these real girls with whom McMahon was acquainted? They certainly are not names Amy or Amelia, as Aaron Marsh wrote about his ex-girlfriend Paula on Copeland’s debut record, Beneath Medicine Tree in the song “When Paula Sparks.” Are they stories told when you’re talking to your sister on the phone about a girl you used to date back in high school? Is Amelia a real girl or an idea or even an ideal? Is it a contemporary story or is it a tale told by your father about an old flame who made a few wrong choices. Whoever this girl is, she or her story blows in the breeze on the open road. The speaker broke her heart. Amelia Jean goes and makes a choice that doesn’t include the speaker in the last verse: “gone and married a soldier.”Whatever happened to her, she her ghost haunts the speaker. Who she became is irrelevant to her memory. And she sits in the speaker’s car like a glass passenger as the speaker drives across the country to figure some things out. 

     

    Music video:

    Track by Track commentary:

  • "Dreamworld" by Rilo Kiley (Repost), Thursday, August 18, 2022

    Composed of former child actors Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett, Rilo Kiley was an indie rock band from Los Angelos but signed to Warner Brothers  for their final album, Under the Blacklight. The band’s song “Pictures of Success” was featured on the mixtape I wrote about last year. Jenny Lewis often serves as the band’s lead singer; however, on this track, Blake Sennett takes the lead vocals.  Under the Blacklight is the band’s final album with the exception of a rarities compilation. After the release of Under the Blacklight and their subsequent tour to support the album, the band went on hiatus, which later turned into a break-up. 

    YOU’RE THE GIRL WHO WANTED MORE. One of singer Jenny Lewis’s most remembered roles on TV as a child actress was an episode from a season 3 episode of The Golden Girls, in which she plays the role of a Sunshine Cadet, a kind of Girl Scout, who volunteers to help the women with some house work. Blanche accidentally gives Daisy, the Sunshine Cadet, Rose’s teddy bear, for which Rose still has sentimental attachment. When Blanche and Dorothy try to persuade the girl to give the bear back, Daisy acts like a sad little girl who would miss the bear too much to let it go; however, as the two women try to persuade Daisy, Daisy turns to extortion, asking for gifts. And as the it becomes clearer to her how much the bear is worth to Rose, the price goes up. The story comes to a conclusion with Daisy threatening to destroy the bear, and Rose feigning defeat, only to push Daisy out the front door, grabbing the bear from Daisy’s hands. In the same year, guitarist and singer Blake Sennett was playing minor roles on Highway to Heaven, Family Ties, The Wonder Years, and Boy Meets World, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and 3rd Rock from the Sun. Lewis would go on to do voice acting and play small roles during and after her tenure with Rilo Kiley, whereas Sennett stopped acting. One of Sennett’s best know roles was playing Joey the Rat in Boy Meets World. 

    NECKING WITH THE BOY WHO COULD ONLY GIVE HER LESS. “Dreamworld” deals with denial and escapism. Delusion is a coping mechanism, but the song also gives the fact of the matter that the characters Sennett sings about are trying to escape from. Dreams are very important to singer/guitarist Blake Sennett, as he has made several accounts for how the band come to be known as Rilo Kiley. The first he claims he had a dream that he was being chased by a sports almanac. When he was caught, the book was opened to a page of a 19th century Australian football player named Rilo Kiley, who only existed in the dream. Another account of the band’s name origin was a dream in which Sennett met a woman who told him when fellow bandmate, Jenny Lewis, would die. The person in the dream was Rilo Kiley. 

  • "Summer Tongues" by Anchor & Braille, Wednesday, August 17, 2022

    Stephen Christian talked about each Anchor & Braille record on the Taco Boys podcast 
    when he was promoting his most recent project, Tension. He said that each record was made with different musicians, and his debut side project record Felt was made with local musicians in mind from around his hometown in Central Florida. Christian looked to friend and Copeland frontman Aaron Marsh to record the record, Copeland’s drummer at the time Johnathan Bucklew and Gasoline Heart‘s Louis DiFabrizio on bass. When Christian debuted his LP, it seemed he had every intention of maintaining this small town sound. But then he moved to Nashville and started associating with other musicians.

    TEAR OFF YOUR SKIN. The bonus DVD release with the Cities special edition shows the portrait of Stephen Christian as a lyricist, jotting down lines in notebooks as he sips coffee in Seattle. Then, in the studio, he’d drink herbal tea and at night inhale vapor for his falsetto notes on songs like “Dismantle.Repair.” and “(*Fin).” Around this time, Stephen Christian seemed particularly prolific, releasing the novel The Orphaned Anything’s: Memoirs of a Lesser Known and starting a non-profit organization called Faceless International. In 2008, Anberlin released New Surrender on Universal Republic Records, and the following year, Christian released his debut side project, Anchor & Braille’s Felt. The songs on Felt are songs that Christian had been holding onto for a while. Christian talks about some songs like “Cadence” and “The Haunting” which became Anberlin songs that he had thought suited Anchor & Braille better until Anberlin talked him into sharing those songs with the band. To me, Felt sounds a lot like Cities–songs that Stephen Christian was writing at a time when he took a moment to process life after touring incessantly. There are visuals we get through the lyrics of enjoying old records and reading novels. We get late nights of wrestling with relationships. We get existential questions, and Stephen Christian doesn’t propose the answer like he does in later Anberlin tracks. In other words, Felt feels like a record that doesn’t have to conform with the standards that Anberlin had to.


    SUNSETS IN GERMANY. But the influence for “Summer Tongues” seems to go further back than Cities, perhaps even taking influence from the early days of Anberlin. When the band started, there were several rumors band members spread about the band name etymology. The truth, the band set straight as early as 2003 in an interview with HM Magazine was that Stephen Christian was talking about all the places he wanted to visit when the band got popular “London, Paris, . . . , and Berlin,” but dropped the d when saying the last city, pronouncing it as an berlin. “Summer Tongues” recalls those childhood, naïve memories of boring days dreaming about what the future holds. The music Christian and Marsh compose for the track further illustrates this mood, wistfully remembering the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals with a little bit more subliminal guitar. I chose this song today because of the dreams that 2008 held, when Anchor & Braille released Felt. I think about the dreams 0f 2003 and before, when Stephen Christian was daydreaming about all the places he would one day visit, when I too was playing Where in the World Is Carman Sandiego, thinking about getting lost at Kings Cross station in London, sitting in Tiergarten Park in Berlin, or wandering through galleries looking at Italian frescos. It’s for the dreams of 2011, the year before Cornerstone folded, the only time I saw Stephen perform as Anchor & Braille at an intimate late-night show after Anberlin headlined main stage. But mostly it’s for my sister: today’s her birthday. She’s the one who actually talked to Stephen Christian at after the show and got him to sing my copy of The Orphan Anything’s. I don’t really like meeting famous people, but I did get to meet Stephen and get a picture with him—all Cornerstone sweaty. For all those summer dreams and many more, wherever life finds you in 2022, let’s enjoy “Summer Tongues.”



  • "Made for You" by OneRepublic, Tuesday, August 16, 2022

    Opening OneRepublic‘s second record, Waking Up,  is the experimental track “Made for You.” Release two years after their debut record Dreaming Out Loud, OneRepublic was busy releasing singles even between records. During these two years, lead singer and chief songwriter for the band, Ryan Tedder, started writing for some of the biggest pop stars, including Beyoncé‘s “Halo” and Kelly Clarkson‘s “Already Gone,” which controversially sounded like OneRepublic’s “Secrets” later released on Waking Up. The second album from OneRepublic would answer whether the band was just a passing fad, a liner note in chart history, or mega stars. 
    PUT PEN TO PAPER, EVERYTHING WAS SINKING. “Made for You” opens the record. It’s a lyrically sparse track full of mood and ambiance. OneRepublic quickly steps up their sound, a band of some classically-trained musicians and a penchant for hip-hop beats. Whereas, Dreaming Out Loud was co-produced by hip hop producer Timbaland, is mostly produced by the band and a few pop producers. “Made for You” certainly isn’t single-worthy and is not designed for the radio. Instead, it serves as an extended introduction to the band’s first single and the second track on the record, “All the Right Moves.” The song feels like it came out on the verge of writer’s block cracking, and when it cracks, the song serves as the album’s opener. Like Sufjan Stevens’ “Death with Dignity,” the opening track invites the muses to lead the record wherever it must go. The end of the song simply features variations on the theme of the band’s first hit from the record, chanting “All the right moves in all the right places” and a recording of a children’s choir singing the song. 
    CAN YOU FEEL?  The surprise hit from the record was “Good Life,” which didn’t even match their number 2 hit of “Apologize.” “All the Right Moves” peaked at number 18 and “Good Life” at number 8. But thanks to the record they released four years later, Native, the band achieved another Hot 100 hit with “Counting Stars.” On the podcast Inside the Studio Tedder talked about his writing process with other musicians, and the headspace and the conversations he sparks to get a good songwriting session started. With so many songs to Tedder’s credit, it’s no wonder that OneRepublic takes long hiatuses. The difference between Waking Up and Native is maturity and security. During Waking Up the band perhaps felt the need to be hitmakers, to hit hard and hit fast. They were a new band and had a lot of potential. And Waking Up this year has been one of my go-to records. But with Native, the band decided to take their time. Youth versus experience. Which is better? This coming on a day that I’m writing very hastily to make my deadline, and the quality will have to be made up for on an editing session. Which is better? Waking Up or Native?

     

  • “What Happened to Us?" by Shura, Monday, August 15, 2022

    Today we enjoy another track from Shura‘s debut record, Nothing’s Real. While Shura is an out and proud lesbian, she decided to release her first record mostly with ambiguous second person pronouns which can be interpreted by listeners however they wanted to interpret the song. Several songs on Nothing’s Real refer to the same break up, and today’s song “What Happened to Us?” refers to the drifting apart in that break up.
    I WAS NEVER READY FOR YOUR LOVE. The Madonna for millennials as one magazine article called her, Shura’s vibey first record captures the wonderment of growing up, even if there’s a little pain involved. I’ve talked quite a bit about Nothing’s Real and even did a track-by-track analysis in April. Today, I’m going to look at this one track and how it captures an unhealthy nostalgia about our past. At the core of the song, Shura talks about falling in love with someone who is a “fiction / someone [she] made up.” The pre-chorus says: “Funny how we remember things / How we hold on to the good / But throw out the bad stuff.” In the past, the speaker has idealized this person and may still to some extent; however, she realizes that the person who lives in her mind is different from who the person really is. In the first verse, the speaker realizes that the other person is perfectly content on herself; she has found a perfect sense of flow, which does not include the speaker. The speaker partially appreciates this, but is mostly sad because of her taciturn ex. 

    I’M NO CHILD, BUT I DON’T FEEL GROWN UP. The album Nothing’s Real centers around Shura growing up. The ambient intro and interludes placed throughout the record are of Shura as a little girl. They come from the young singer’s father, an English documentary film maker, taking home videos and Shura’s fascination with recording. The synthesizers backing the tracks are a bit eerie, but they capture the innocence of youth and contrast with the pains of growing up. Immediately listeners are introduced to Shura’s panic attack in the second track, the title song “Nothing’s Real.”  Today’s song seems to tell a story about high school or college, when the speaker is having lunch with a lover who is breaking away from her. The song speaks about how the memories are idealized and really the relationship was probably unhealthy. Maybe they outgrew the relationship; maybe it was toxic. There will inevitably be good memories, but it doesn’t excuse what it’s become or what you are realizing was there all along.













     

  • “Paperthin Hymn” by Anberlin, Sunday, August 14, 2022 (partial repost)

    Anberlin‘s Blueprints for the Black Market was a strong debut for the band. The circumstances, the tours and the connections from those tours, though transcended the first record’s success. First Anberlin headlined the Tooth & Nail Tour when Further Seems Forever dropped off due to lead singer Jason Gleason leaving the band; this was Anberlin’s first major tour and they were upgraded to headliner. The band toured a lot on their first record and gained a considerable fan base. But touring came with the price of not being there for the band’s families. Touring paid off,  despite the hiccup of one band member getting too involved with the drugs and partying to fulfill his duties in the band. 

    WHEN YOUR ONLY FRIENDS ARE HOTEL ROOMS. Never Take Friendship Personal turned Anberlin from a ‘90s-rock leaning band to an Emo band. The title of the opening track and the record come from the band’s decision to kick out guitarist Joey Bruce. Besides the opening track, all the lyrics on Never Take Friendship Personal are much more emotional and concrete than the band’s first record. The lyrical poignancy singer Stephen Christian discovers on this record as he writes about friendships, relationships, sex, lust, spirituality, and temptation rival their fan-favorite Cities but never seem to hit as raw ever again in their career. Anberlin’s sound also evolved. Leaning into their heavier tendencies on tracks like “Cold War Transmissions” and “Glass to the Arson,” Never Take Friendship Personal intensifies the band’s rock sound with tracks like the title track and “The Feel Good Drag,” which contain screaming–the former containing uncredited unclean vocals by Demon Hunter’s Ryan Clark and the latter containing a scream by lead singer Stephen Christian himself. 

    AUGUST EVENINGS BRING SOLEMN WARNINGS TO REMEMBER: TO KISS THE ONES YOU LOVE GOODNIGHT. Anberlin’s “Paperthin Hymn” is an excellent example of how a rock song can be melancholy and rock too. The band released other songs about loss and depression. They released many other songs in minor keys, but the elegiac lyrics, the Deon Rexroat D minor bass riff build, and Joseph Milligan’s guitar riffs build this song into a simultaneously hauntingly tragic and kick-ass song. Certainly, as the song became the band’s greatest hit in their early career, it must have lost some meaning when played live. According to Stephen Christian’s Tumblr explaining Anberlin’s songs, “Paperthin Hymn” is reportedly about the death of Stephen Christian’s grandmother and the death of Joseph Milligan’s sister to cancer. Lyrically, the song is a reminder to show your affection for the people you love because we cannot know how long they will be with us. The song also laments the cost of the band’s heavy touring schedule as loss of loved ones happened to the band as they were out on the road. There’s an inevitable guilt that comes from pursuing a dream that keeps you away from loved ones.


  • “Roar” by Katy Perry, Saturday, August 13, 2022

    Teenage Dream was Katy Perry‘s marriage album. Perry, along with her songwriting team of Max Martin, Dr. Luke, Et. al. wrote the songs as the singer was dating British comedian Russell Brand. Perry and Brand were married less than two months after the release of Teenage Dream in a Hindu wedding ceremony in India. But Perry’s teenage dream soon became a nightmare, with the couple separating 14 months after the marriage, Brand calling off the marriage via text message. 

    I USED TO BITE MY TONGUE AND HOLD MY BREATH. The documentary film Part of Me shows a heartbreaking scene in which Perry has just found out that her marriage is over. Not even one album cycle had passed, and Perry’s marriage had dissolved. The single “Part of Me” was released on Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection

    expanding the album cycle until she released Prism in October of 2013. But Prism isn’t a morose break up album. Starting with the anthemic “Roar,” an arguably more powerful track than Teenage Dream‘s counterpart “Firework,” Prism is a balanced album in dealing with Perry’s past traumas. That being said, Prism lacks the cohesion of its predecessor, feeling like an imitation or a variation on the near perfect form Teenage Dream set. Perry has yet to follow up the magic on Teenage Dream with Prism’s follow up, Witness experimenting more with the formula but with even less cohesion.

    I STOOD FOR NOTHING, SO I FELL FOR EVERYTHING. “Roar” uses clichés and mixes metaphors, but between the lines, the song hints at some of the adversity Katy Perry faced throughout her career. In an interview with Ryan Seacrest, Perry said that she felt that there was a time in her life when she “didn’t stand for anything” so she “fell for everything.” Of course listeners can look to Perry’s career leading up to this interview, first as a Christian singer then as an emerging talent marketed to Alternative markets, and finally her ascent to pop superstardom to look for moral compromises. The conservative Christians judged Perry every step of her way. In an interview last year with Inside the Studio Podcast last year, Perry talked about finding a new moral compass after no longer believing in the teachings of the Bible she grew up with. Morality is also overcoming the patriarchy in the entertainment industries imposed as formulas for female success. “Roar” is Perry waking up and taking the reins of her own success, shrugging off the mistakes of the past.

  • "We Will Stand" Avalon ft. Russ Taff, Friday, August 12, 2022

    Today we’re going to talk about some repressed memories and the cringy music of my preteen years. Out of teenage rebellion, I started listening to a Contemporary Christian Radio station out of Greenville South Carolina around 1999 called HIS Radio and around this time my family also got the SKY Angel satellite system which gave us Praise TV, showing all the CCM music videos from the late ’80s to the day as long as they weren’t too hard.  

    YET WE BUILD WALLS BETWEEN OUR BROTHERS AND OURSELVES. The timeline is a little fuzzy, and rather than doing a well-researched post, I thought I’d examine an artifact from my past. Kind of like how K-pop today separates the boys from the girls, so did the ’90s with boybands and girl groups. So did CCM. If you liked Spice Girls, why not try Point of Grace? If you liked The Backstreet Boys, obviously you would love 4Him. But then there was Avalon, a revolutionary co-ed group–and the alternative version of Avalon, Raze, a story for another day! Avalon was formed in Nashville, Tennessee, by a record executive who found four clean-cut men and women who had a love for evangelism and who could sing well together. The group originally consisted of Michael Passions and Janna Potter (later Janna Long) and two other members who left the group before they recorded their self-titled record with Jody McBrayer and Nikki Hassman-Anders filling out the group. Hassman-Anders left the group after their second record Testify to Love. In 2000, Janna married fellow CCM singer Greg Long, and in 2004, Greg replaced Michael Passions. 
    YOU’RE MY BROTHER, YOU’RE MY SISTER / SO TAKE ME BY THE HAND. Today’s song, “We Will Stand” comes from Avalon’s 2006 record, Stand. Originally performed by the featured artist, Russ Taff, a CCM singer-songwriter whose solo career proceeded Avalon’s by over a decade, Taff and his wife Tori wrote the song in response to racial discrimination toward a black gospel singer. There are a few caveats to the inclusion proposed in this 1983 hit. The first caveat is mentioned in the lyrics: “I don’t care what label you wear / If you believe in Jesus, you belong with me.” Track three on the record, “Orphans of God,” states: “There are no strangers / There are no outcasts / There are no orphans of God.” These two song seem to call all the outcasts to come and experience God’s love. But what about Avalon’s orphan, Michael Passions? In 2004 the press releases stated that Passions had left the group to peruse a solo career, and Janna Long’s husband Greg would be stepping in. In 2020, Passions revealed that he was asked to leave the group due to his sexuality. But solely blaming the members of Avalon for orphaning one of their founding members is missing the point. In his interview with The Washington Blade (see link above), Passions reveals that the record label (Sparrow Records) kept a “tight [sic] rein on [the group] because they created the group, it was their idea.” Hence the contradictory story McBrayer allegedly told in an interview with CCM Magazine when Passions left the group. We could only brush the surface of the scandals in CCM  in today’s post, and there seems to be much more to talk about Avalon, Russ Taff, and the underbelly of the industry itself. It’s always interesting to cover Christian music because there’s “Thou shalt not lie” meets the tight reins of PR and image consulting. But instead of directly supporting Avalon, why not check out Ty Herndon and Kristen Chenoweth‘s inclusive version of “Orphans of God“?



    Listen to the recent episode of Good Christian Fun talking about this song.

    Avalon version:
    Russ Taff  album version:


    Live Gaither Homecoming version: