Melody of You

Mark Joseph, in a commentary on "Melody of You" which appeared in the National Review in 2003, writes:

Together on "Melody of You," Slocum and Nash have done nothing short of making a mockery of both modern pop music and the worship-music business — for they have managed to prove, in the course of another "song, three minutes long," that pop music can indeed talk intelligently and succinctly about important and transcendent things, and remind the entire worship-music industry that the Author of the snowflake and the butterfly likely values creative expression over vain repetition.

It's hard to put it much better than that. "Melody of You" stands out -- modestly, quietly -- as just maybe the highlight of the band's career. Underneath all the doubt, darkness, and despair, this proclamation of surrender: "I can do nothing else."Like the band's name, which as you may recall is based on the idea that we can only offer God things that are already God's to begin with, "Melody of You" suggests a certain worthlessness to human endeavors; God is a tune "I only write variations to." But oh, those variations. That exquisite gather-round-the-campfire* fingerpicking and that delicate string arrangement. Why bother? Why make music for God if God made music? Because you can do nothing else. And sometimes you come up with songs like this. Slocum's almost ironically understated one-sentence commentary on the song tells us that "Melody" is "an attempt to describe God in a poetic manner similar to the Psalms." Mission accomplished, I think. I'd like to see any "worship band" write as convincingly about God not only as draught beer, but also as pint glass and barman.

By the way, I'm glad they didn't call the band Sixpence to the Good, which is how C.S. Lewis originally put it.

(*I guarantee I stole the adjective campfire re: this song from somewhere else, but I can't remember where.)