#20
Newsboys- "Take Me To Your Leader"
Year: 1996
Label: Sparrow
Favorite songs: God Is Not A Secret, Breakfast, Lost the Plot, Cup O' Tea, Take Me To Your Leader, It's All Who You Know
Lyric sample: "Justin is adjustin' to the odor from Theodore's evergreen incense / But aroma therapy don't make him any younger than Oliver's all liver supplements / His late mate Merrilee merrily said immortality can't be bought in a jar / This just in, Justin's had enough of cure-alls, gonna quiz the neighbor kid with the fish on his car"
Surprised to see this here? I am too, a little. I didn't think I liked Newsboys that much. However, this is a record of which I have fond memories and which - here's the kicker - has lost none of its potency today.
Long about 1997 I was 11 years old, and some of my friends were becoming teenagers. They started getting into heavier music than the Michael W. Smith-ish pop stuff I was hearing at home. One of the first really heavy songs I heard was "Some Kind of Zombie" by Audio Adrenaline, which was by all accounts a lot of noise. Awesome noise, but not the kind of thing on which parents and kids tend to agree. Now my parents were cool, and as long as I was listening to Christian bands with positive lyrics we were mostly good, but that didn't keep me from feeling a little edgy when courting music that was also edgy. I never really knew when the straws would break the proverbial camel's back and they'd decide that that noisy rock was corrupting me, and sending both me and the camel spiraling through the eye of the needle in a hand basket... or something. I had borrowed Take Me to Your Leader from the same rebel friend that unleashed "Zombie" on my young brain, and I remember playing it really quietly when my parents weren't home. I laugh about it now, because it's pretty funny how nervous I was about it. Listen to the opening track, "God is Not A Secret." Hear those grungy guitars? EDGY. And don't even get me started on "Lost the Plot" whose jarring chord choices, raspy vocals and wailing background licks made its message rather indigestible to the average home school mom.
Since that day I've learned to play it loud and proud. 12 years later this is still Newsboys' best album and one of the gems of the 90's. The song that defines the band's sound for me (and many), Breakfast, is perhaps their most well-known song next to "Shine." How many people will never look at Captain Crunch the same way again? But don't stop there, because there's a wealth of music on this record that transcends the pulpy "Breakfast." Leader stands out among other Newsboys albums in several related ways. The first is that it is undeniably their heaviest effort. Remember I was talking about 'edgy?' Here it is. "God is Not A Secret," "Breathe," "Cup O' Tea," and "Lost the Plot" are all intense rock tracks thick with cymbal peals and cranked up guitar amps. You won't find this on most of the rest of the 'boys' discography. The second is that the rock is used to excellent effect. There are not one but two songs that tend to give me chills when I hear them, and that is a combination of the powerful lyrics and perfectly matched musical and vocal passages forming a poignant whole.
One of these songs is the uncompromising opener "God is Not a Secret" with its raw, raging attack and the cutting bridge lines: "And would I wash my hands again / Would I deny my Savior when / He hung inside the public square / Did not my silence put Him there." It's sung with such energy that it brings both sonic satisfaction and instant conviction. This is the reason it bothered me so much when, on their greatest hits compilation, Newsboys recorded a new version of this song with Toby Mac guest rapping. That version, disrupting the delicate balance of perfection, excluded this arresting bridge, opting instead for the banal lines "Faith ain't easy to understand / When a bird in the bush is worth two in the hand / The truth ain't nothing to taste and hide / You gotta get up, put up, get off your backside." Thankfully, the original has been preserved for me to treasure - and treasure it I do.
"Lost the Plot" slowly builds to the screamed lines "Are you still listenin'? / Cause we're obviously not / We've forgotten our first love / We have lost the plot / And are You still callin'? / You forgave, we forgot / We're such experts at stallin' / That we lost the plot." It's a hauntingly honest reflection. I don't have time to talk about all the great moments on this record. It marks John James' last appearance with the band. Steve Taylor's lyrical influence is strongly felt. Many of the songs on this album are lyrically strong. The bouncy and quirky, the brash and untidy, the tender and soft - all of this is found across this spectacular alien soundscape. It's a place I don't mind being transported for 45 minutes.
Flight training: Watch the "Take Me To Your Leader" music video!
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