Shaded Red – Shaded Red

Today’s album is a bit of a request, rather, a half-hearted suggestion by my sister who knows how much I enjoy making fun of bad Christian bands. So, while I wait for The Complete Hank Williams to download into my Zune, let’s take a trip back to a similar past, all the way back…

…to the year 1997.

It was a great year for Christian rock, to be honest, albums I honestly love and will probably talk about all seem to have come out on this year, and would continue to come out until the entire genre kind of dried out and became utterly useless after Y2K (an unwritten and forgotten casualty, I guess).

Shaded Red is bad, but for only one reason: the lyrics. I don’t normally fault bands for lyrics, in fact often if the music is good enough, I will drop any criticism of the lyrics in the spirit of positive writing. Problem is, the music isn’t good enough to forgive Shaded Red’s songwriting. It’s passable, for certain, even catchy, and the guys know how to play them some instruments, but, well, let’s talk about these lyrics.

For one, the song titles are as follows:

1. Caught
2. Collide
3. Let It Out
4. Faker
5. Found Someone
6. Something
7. Falling For You
8. Dreamin
9. Fear Not
10. Far Away
11. Sunk
12. Use Me

I’ve seen more imagination in a Collective Soul album, for crying out loud. I mean, one of the songs is called “Something“. All right, so alternative rocks band are known for unimaginative, stale, usually mono-syllabic titles. By the same token, the new alternative rock, “indie rock”, uses abstract volumes of meaningless drivel with which to title their songs, and depending on how easily irritated you are by acts of mindless conformity, both methods may annoy you.

The first song, “Caught“, isn’t so bad, just generic. The whole groove is fairly standard but still there, so you may be feeling optimistic about the whole thing. Then we have “Collide“, which is also catchy, but well, it’s got a chorus:

Run away, run away from here
You gotta run away
Run away, run away from here
You feel you need to run away from me

You better believe this chorus repeats nigh endlessly. You’d think the verses would have to be pretty good to justify a chorus of about 4 words:

Every time I close my eyes, I see you
Walkin’ away from me
Walkin’ away from us
Walkin’ away from love

That is seriously the entirety of the second verse. The next song is actually my favorite on the album, “Let It Out“, as it has a great alternative head-bobbing sound to it kind of like Pearl Jam Lite, and it too has a catchy chorus:

Let it out (let it out), let it out, let it out
Let it out, hey hey
Let it out (let it out), say let it out, let it out
Let it out, yeah
Hey hey yeah yeah

I love this band, but the best is yet to come.

The next song, “Faker“, is well, about a faker… who needs God. It’s not particularly catchy, but when the message is that strong, you don’t need much more than an acoustic guitar really.

The best song is probably “Found Someone“, not only for the generic chorus:

All night, all day
I feel your touch
I feel your love
It’s your love that makes it right
All night, all day
I feel your touch
I feel your love
It’s your love that holds me tight

But for the fact that:

Didn’t He come to save us
Didn’t He come to tell us
Of true love
Forever and ever
Yet He fell apart on the cross He bore
True love he gave
So I could say, oh yeah

That’s right, in most of the verses there, this is revealed to be a love song in the most literal sense about our Savior, Jesus Christ. Believe it or not, this is actually quite the convention in Christian songwriting, the “literal” interpretation of biblical verses having to do with the church being the “bride of Christ” and things like that. A lot of artists will write a generic love song and then turn it out around to really be about Jesus. This sort of Deiphilia can be pretty disturbing, but most listeners don’t really pay any mind.

The next song, “Something“, only needs to be talked about as far as the title. What could you possibly expect from a song called that?

I honestly have a lot of trouble listening to “Falling For You” because, well there is just all kinds of crap wrong with this song. For one, it starts with a goofy voice saying “SPIN IT SPIN IT SPIN IT SPIN IT” and then the dern thing just skips on to the next song, EVERY TIME. I don’t know what’s wrong with this song or my skipping finger.

Another lyrical wonder is the song “Dreamin“:

Don’t sway, don’t break
Don’t fall, don’t quake
Don’t speak, don’t run
Don’t cry, just trust
Don’t leave, don’t shake
Don’t crawl, don’t fake
Don’t shy, don’t shun
Don’t fear, just trust

Yeeesh! The chorus isn’t much better really, it’s basically “Don’t Stop Dreamin”, in kind of that praise’n'worship mode that sounds like gospel only sung by boring white guys. I mean, really, this is the kind of song that they would play at a church gig and extend to 15 hundred hours with an extended sing along of “Don’t stop Dreamin”.

Then we get another slow song called “Fear Not“, which is a love song sung from the perspective of Jesus Christ. This is another convention in Christian songwriting, and it provides us with lines like:

I move in, in closer to you
The breath you breathe I supply
For countless times I’ve called out
With an everlasting love, everlasting love

Fear not now, fear not now
Hear what I’m saying to you
You can trust now, let your guard down
Let my love embrace you

I really want to buy Jesus a box of chocolates now. Anyway, you know your song is going to have a certain cheese element when you have one of the Newsboys guest-appear on your praise song with a keyboard solo. It’s not a bad solo for 3 notes.

We then have yet another slow song called “Far Away”, which is… well… it’s one of those songs that is SO generic that I can’t really even think of anything to say about it. The chorus is “I’m so far away… so far away”, and the song is mainly just the chorus. The end!

Then we have… wait a minute… 3/4 time? Minor chords? Punchy singing? This… is actually good! Man it’s been so long, I almost forgot what a good song sounds like! Even the lyrics are pretty good, a basic drowning metaphor having to do with a sunken ship, I really have no complaints! Why is it at the end of the album then?

Oh wait, it’s not. We have just one more praise song to go, “Use Me”. It has a beautiful if not “churchy” piano melody that you can tell is being played acoustically since intrepid headphone users can hear keys squeaking. Anyway, the lyrics are still “blah”, that’s no surprise, but I really like this song for the piano. The lyrics are about 8 words, most of which are “Use Me”, so I shan’t bother with a reprint. Let’s just get as far away from this album as possible. I hope you’re happy, sister!

Man that Hank Williams still hasn’t downloaded.

USE MEEEEEE