Mixtapemotions

In 1934, Harry Warren and Al Dubin wrote “I Only Have Eyes for You” for the musical comedy Dames. The song became a standard, covered by Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald among other artists. In 1959, Doo Wop group The Flamingos recorded what is now considered the definitive version of the song. The group had just had a crossover pop hit with the song “Lovers Never Say Goodbye,” and were hoping to follow up the song with another crossover. Billboard’s Rhythm & Blues Chart began in 1949 as a way to track the sales and impact of African American music. Following the re-titling of Harlem Hit Parade and the vague title of “Race Records,” Billboard settled with the title Rhythm & Blues, which now exists as Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. Meanwhile, the Billboard 100 was considered the singles’ pop chart, composed mostly of white artists with a few “crossover hits” by artists of color.

ARE THE STARS OUT TONIGHT? The Flamingos formed in 1953 as a vocal group, founded on tight harmonies. Several members changed throughout the early years. The group was most often a quintet, but at one point they had six members. To follow up the group’s success with “Lovers Never Say Goodbye,” they worked with producer George Goldner who believed that the group could see their next era of success covering classic songs by George Gershwin. But it was the 1934 musical number from Dames that would become The Flamingos’ biggest hit. At first, the recording sessions for “I Only Have Eyes for You” were not going well. The group’s high tenor, Terry “Buzzy” Johnson also arranged the songs for The Flamingos. On an episode of BBC’s Soul Music, Johnson tells the story about how the song finally worked. Johnson had been trying to find a unique angle for the song, even trying to make it sound “Russian” like “The Volga Boatman.” Working late on the arrangement, he fell asleep, and around 4 a.m. he claims to have heard the finished song in a dream. He claims that the song came from God. 

MY LOVE MUST BE A KIND OF BLIND LOVE. The otherworldly sound of “I Only Have Eyes for You” works both as a period piece of late ‘50s Doo Wop and as an ageless love song. The Flamingos’ version has appeared in many movies and television shows, often to establish a setting in the late ‘50s or early ‘60s. But if we listen to the song with fresh ears, forgetting the cultural context, the song is pure production. After a few strummed chords on the electric guitar, the piano and brush drums build a slow, almost lunar ambience. I may say that because of the references to heavenly bodies, but the lyrics of the song are quite simple. But while the song’s lyrics are brief, the music makes them linger. The musical depth is not the instrumentation, but the harmonies of the vocal group who deepen the atmosphere of the song. The song is a rich dessert for the ears. Did the song come from God? It’s funny how our brains work when we sleep. When we sleep on a problem, we may wake up refreshed sometimes with the solution pieced together. Is that a God thing? Maybe.  

Read the lyrics on Genius.

If there were a Mount Rushmore of contemporary Christian recording artists, Steven Curtis Chapman would be one of the faces etched into the side of the cliff. He’s been releasing music consistently since 1987 and most recently released the album Still in 2022. Before releasing his own music, Chapman had a publishing deal with Sparrow Records, writing songs for other artists. When he made his debut First Hand, he had a number 2 hit with “Weak Days.”  He scored a number-one hit on his next album, Real Life Conversations  with the song “His Eyes.” Chapman’s first four studio albums were released yearly and his fifth album began a two-year album cycle. 

IF IN THE MORNIN’ YOU WAKE UP AND THE SUN DOES NOT APPEAR. By the time I started listening to Christian radio in 1999, Steven Curtis Chapman had many hits. However, many of his hits from the ‘80s weren’t played often. Speechless had just been released, and its lead single “Dive” was a major hit. Some of his novelty hits like “The Great Adventure” and “Dancing with the Dinosaur” received some airplay along with some of his serious hits like “For the Sake of the Call” and “More to This Life.” But more than any of Chapman’s older hits, the acoustic ballad from his third record, 1988’s More to This Life, “I Will Be Here” received the most airplay. Chapman wrote the song for his wife Mary Beth Chapman in the early years of their marriage. The singer reflects on these early years in his autobiography Between Heaven and the Real World: My Story in Chapter 10 “Divorce Is Not an Option,” talking about how his faithful wife helped him book shows, ran the soundboard, and even sold merch at his shows. Chapman talks about how his views on marriage were shaped by his parents who seemingly had a strong marriage until he and his older brother, Herb Jr. left home. Chapman’s parents eventually divorced. In one interview, talking about “I Will Be Here,” Chapman said of the song: “It felt like I needed to drive a stake in the ground again and say to [Mary Beth], ‘No matter how I feel when I wake up tomorrow, no matter how disillusioned we may be at different points of this, I have made this commitment to you, and I will be here when you wake up.’”

WHEN THE LAUGHTER TURNS TO CRYING. Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman have been married for nearly 40 years. The couple has raised six children, three biological and three adopted children from China. The Chapmans’ two sons formed the indie rock band Colony House. The Chapmans adopted Shaohanna Hope Chapman in 2000 and soon after became adoption activists. According to an article Steven wrote for CNN, his eldest daughter Emily who first tried to convince the family to adopt after she went on a mission trip to Haiti. Eventually, the Chapmans founded Shaohanna’s Hope, now Show Hope, a faith-based non-profit that supports orphans and Christians who want to adopt. Tragically, in 2008, their youngest adopted daughter Maria Sue Chapman was killed just after her fifth birthday when she ran behind the car her brother was driving. An investigation by the Tennessee High Patrol ruled the event an accident resulting in no charges filed against the driver or the family. Steven nearly quit music after this tragedy, but the family bonded together and eventually talked with the media about how faith strengthened their family after a tragic event. 

HOLD MY HAND AND HAVE NO FEAR. Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman’s marriage has been filled with highs and lows. Any lasting relationship has them. Now that “The mirror tells [them they’re] older” it appears that the couple has stuck to the vows they made at their wedding and that Steven made in a song. And while I have about fifty interjections I want to make about Christian adoption agencies–listen to Joel Kim Booster’s take on them as it’s an experience he lived–, I want to believe that SCC is trying to do the right thing in the world with the platform that he’s been given. But more importantly, I want to believe that a love story outside of the Protestant heteronormative parameters in “I Will Be Here” is possible. It always seemed so arrogant to believe that Christians held the monopoly on happy, lasting marriages when the practice had happened all around the world long before Christianity. But the Evangelical worldview is a hard one to shake. It comes back to haunt me in the middle of the night when I wonder if it’s all heading somewhere. Voices from sermons, Bible classes, or CCM radio interviews creep in to get me to doubt myself. But ironically, it was in the middle of it, that I could never believe that an “I Will Be Here” kind of love existed because I didn’t see a model of marriage that I actually wanted. I think about what Karamo Brown told one of the clients on the latest season of Queer Eye, “Trust yourself.” It’s quite the opposite idea from what I grew up with, but ultimately realizing that only the I in “I Will Be Here” has any power in the situation. I can choose to stay, but you may choose to leave. And when you try to put more pressure on the situation, you are more likely to leave. I can learn how to love you better. I can learn how to sacrifice for love. I hope that you will do the same. But I am not God. I do not have control. But I can trust myself. That’s all. 

Dave Barnes is a Contemporary Christian singer-songwriter, but he isn’t completely bound by the genre. Barnes is a Nashville songwriter whose songs have been recorded by country, pop, and CCM singers. In fact, his 2010 hit, “God Gave Me You,” became a number-one hit for country singer and future The Voice judge, Blake Shelton. Barnes’s version has a lot less twang but all the production quality of a pop-country hit. Barnes wrote the song for his wife who had been through the “ups and downs” of his musical career. Shelton heard the song on a CCM radio station and decided to propose to his then-girlfriend, fellow country star, Miranda Lambert. 

WE ARE STITCHED TOGETHER.  The strap-line of the song is told in the title: “God Gave Me You.” The speaker was broken until he met the right person. That person came from God, and together God and the man’s soulmate mend the speaker’s heart. Many of us listen to a song like this and think about our own relationships. We might think about the ways we’ve failed those we’ve loved in the past, or how they have failed us. Christians might look at songs like this as a formula: be the right person, God will send the right person; God will give you 50+ years of a satisfying marriage with 2.5 kids, satiating sex, and ultimate fulfillment that you’ve fruitfully multiplied. And sometimes that works out. To this day, Barnes remains happily married with three kids. Like Shelton, listeners can be enchanted by the handsome dirty blond Barnes holding his guitar, singing about “an angel lovely” being tricked into falling for someone who is out of his league. If only you let God work his matchmaking magic, this fairytale could happen to you. By contrast, Blake Shelton, who covered the song, dedicating it to his new bride, Miranda Lambert, is no longer married to Lambert. As Shelton’s video for “God Gave Me You” (see below) features Lambert, it is no longer played on Country Music Television (CMT). Sometimes love doesn’t work out, and we wonder what went wrong. 

I’VE BEEN A WALKING HEARTACHE. I’VE MADE A MESS OF ME. In 2014 I used this song in my religion class for my adult ESL students. Somehow we were talking about love and relationships, a topic I really had no business talking about being single and slowly coming to terms with my sexuality. My students felt that “God Gave Me You” was a nice fairytale of a song. The supporting Bible verses, such as Genesis 2:23-24, which says: ‘The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” (NIV) didn’t make the students buy into the “divine conspiracy.” And I was buying into less and less. The formula for a good marriage puts so much pressure on both parties and makes the relationship with God transactional. If I do x, God will bless me with y.  If I am faithful until marriage, God will bless me with a “smokin’ hot wife.” And there’s tons of rhetoric regarding the opposite: If you do x, God will allow y to happen to you. If you look at porn, you’ll become a sex addict, a rapist, or maybe even gay. If you have sex before marriage, your marriage will likely end in divorce. The problem was, in 2014 when the divine conspiracy was thwarted, I started to hear stories about marriages breaking up when young adults married because their hormones told them to marry but in their 30s and 40s they realized they didn’t love their partners and they wanted more from their lives. And the biggest thing that shattered this myth for me, was realizing that no matter how I tried to deny my truth, I only saw a life of misery. So that led me to a bit of rebellion.

Dave Barnes music video:

“Grace” was one of the first hits for the South Korean electronic indie band Adoy. The song opens their 2015 debut EP Catnip.  In a recent interview with Front Row Live lead vocalist Oh Ju-hwan and keyboardist Zee talked with Rob Herrera  while they were on their first U.S. tour.  The two musicians talked about their writing process in Adoy. Although Ju-hwan is the lead singer and sings in English, he is not fluent in conversation, so Zee often handles the English questions and translates the interview questions and answers. So why then, would a band choose to write their songs in a language their lead singer wasn’t fluent in?

Ten years ago, Lady Gaga released her most avant-garde record, Artpop, an album that polarized both fans and critics alike. To be fair, the album was a statement of a pop star’s artistic vision. To illustrate that vision, Lady Gaga channels ‘60s pastiche in the way that Andy Warhol blended the popular and the artistic. But with the critical pushback of Artpop, Lady Gaga took note and didn’t make another dance-pop record until Chromatica in 2020, instead venturing into acting, singing standards with Tony Bennett, a folk-rock album Joanne, and the Oscar-winning soundtrack to the film she starred in A Star Is Born. In 2020, the Lady Gaga persona could have done anything, and yet she graced fans with a return trip to the dance floor. 

Official audio:

Chromatica ball live:

Remix: