Tag Archives: Coldplay

Mylo-the-what-now???

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If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you know I’m a huge Coldplay fan.  And last night was like Christmas at the Delamont house!  I got home from leading worship at our evening service feeling pretty wiped.  I went to bed fairly early but first checked to see if Coldplay’s new album Mylo Xyloto was available for download yet on iTunes.

YES!!!!!!!!

It most certainly was!  So instead of sleeping I decided to listen to the whole thing straight through.  It was fantastic!

I love Coldplay because like me, they are so obviously music fans.  They pull influences in to their music from all over the place.  There’s even a track featuring Rihanna on here.  It’s called “Princess of China” and it’s a great track.  Some of my other favourite tracks on the album are the instrumental opener “Mylo Xyloto”, “Charlie Brown”, and “Up With the Birds”.

Coldplay is inspiring to me because they are constantly evolving, constantly trying new things.  They may have gained or lost some fans along the way because of that.  I don’t know and I don’t care.  But they never stand still.  With every music video, every song, and every live show they are trying new things.

As a musician, pastor, and heck, even just as a human I really resonate with that.

Never. stand. still

So you’ve got a large group of people that are happy with what you’re doing now.  Great!  But don’t just stay there.  Never stand still.

You’re comfortable, you’ve found your “groove”.  Well, what’s next?  Are you just going to stay where it’s comfortable?  Never stand still.

You think you’ve got it figured out.  You’ve been doing this for a long time.  Think you’re done learning and growing?  Think there’s nothing left for you to learn?  Never stand still.

You may not be us much of a Coldplay fan as I am.  I’m not here to convert you to the fan club.  I’m just here to ask that if you’re someone who wants to make this world better, if you’re someone that wants to live a life full of purpose, and especially if you’re someone who wants to help people discover who Jesus is…if that’s you…then never stand still.

 

By the way, in case you were wondering where in the world the band got the idea for their album name “Mylo Xyloto” here’s what lead singer Chris Martin told The Sun (UK Newspaper) in September, 2011.

Quoting The Sun: It is pronounced My-low Zy-letoe… and even the lads admit the title doesn’t mean anything. Chris says: “At the moment it seems a bit ridiculous and I accept that. “Something about it feels quite fresh. The title doesn’t have any other meaning. I think we’re a band with a lot of history now so it’s nice to come up with something that doesn’t have any history at all. We’ve had that title for about two years on a board and any other potential titles had to be written next to it. Other ones made more sense but we just liked this one, that’s all we can defend it with.”

Choosing New Songs

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Fall is an exciting time for me.

Hockey season is almost here.

iPhone 5, a new Sigur Ros album, and a new Coldplay album are all coming out in October.

AAAAAND…It’s the beginning of a new “ministry” year which means I’m looking for new songs for our congregation to sing.

New songs can help keep things feeling fresh, they can help support new sermon series, and they can become anthems for your congregation that propel the vision of the church forward.

Because what we sing can have such a big impact on us I feel it’s really important to be intentional about picking the best songs for your congregation that you possibly can.  Don’t just choose from the worshiptogether.com “top 10 of the month” list.

This fall I enlisted the help of my “leadership core” team.  This team is made up of eight of our volunteers who are part of our worship teams.  Here’s how we approached it, and it’s still a work in progress.

I sent the team a list of songs and asked them to answer these questions.

  1. Is it singable/catchy?  Can you picture our church singing it?
  2. Are you comfortable with the wording?  (theology)
  3. Any other thoughts?

Here are the front runners from the list I sent them with some of their comments.

God Is Able – Hillsong Live

  • easy to sing
  • good words and message
  • “I like it!”

Lord, I Need You – Chris Tomlin 

  • “our church would love it”
  • cross generational appeal
  • familiar and beautiful

Some interesting takeaways from this exercise

As the Worship Pastor it’s still ultimately up to me to choose the right songs for our church.  Not all of the suggestions I got back from the team will be songs I consider.  Some of them could be special music numbers.  In the end I was really glad to have their help and it gave me some good perspective.  I think I’m much closer now to having a few new songs to introduce over the next few months.

What process do you use to choose new songs for your church?  I’d love to hear from others out there.