31 Albums for 31 Years
When I turned 25, I planned to write a series of articles on my 25 favorite films, 25 favorite albums, and 25 favorite books. I only finished the film article; the album article stalled and I gave up on it. Then, when I turned 30 last year, I attempted to complete the series again—now with 20% more items—but it took so long to finish the album article that I’m not 30 anymore. So here are the 31 albums that are the nearest and dearest to me. (Well, there are 32, at least, depending on how you count things.)
* = Included on my 20 Albums for 20 Years list (unpublished)
^ = Included on my 25 Albums for 25 Years list (unpublished)
Abandoned to God (1999) — Steve Camp*^
A crash course in Protestant history and theology and an impassioned call to godliness in life and ministry, this album, which my dad introduced to me, played a major role in my spiritual formation in high school. Even now listening to it lights a fire under me and makes me straighten up my spine. But lest I give the impression the album is only a sermon or lecture, I should note how astonishingly good the instrumental and backup-vocal arrangements are. This is among the best-produced albums on this list.
Anomaly (2014) — Lecrae^
The first hip-hop album I ever purchased. Being a broke (or just cheap?) college student, I had discovered Christian hip-hop through the Humble Beast collective and other independent artists who were giving away their music for free, mostly through the website NoiseTrade. But Anomaly so impressed itself on me when it was briefly available for free streaming on Apple Music, I decided to add it to my small CD collection. It has been a companion on many commutes, and the tracks “Outsiders” and “Fear” have been a reorienting challenge to me in times when I have felt the greatest pull toward living for respectability and relevance. (But no, I still couldn’t tell you if “All I Need Is You” is about Jesus or marriage.)
TIED: Beauty Will Rise (2009) and Re:Creation (2011) — Steven Curtis Chapman^
I group these two albums together because, in a way, they complete each other. Stylistically, both eschew the highly polished studio sound of Chapman’s previous few albums for pared-back, mostly acoustic instrumentations. And the two tell one story. Beauty Will Rise is a raw, intensely personal, Job-like lament following a horrific family tragedy. With Re:Creation a few years later, Chapman reimagines some of his greatest songs in a reaffirmation that, even in the face of tragedy, he’s going to “keep singing and believing what all of my songs say.” I prefer the latter album, but its heights wouldn’t be nearly so high without the depths plumbed by the former.
Blurryface (2015) — Twenty One Pilots
When I find an artist or band I really like, I tend to listen to them obsessively and aspire, at least, to be a completionist and survey their entire discography. A corollary outcome of this is that I can be very slow to try out new music. A case in point is that, except for Twenty One Pilots, there are no artists or bands on this list that I discovered after 2017. But Twenty One Pilots really clicked for me when a friend played me some songs from Blurryface in 2021. In fact, one of the reasons I’ve come to enjoy their music so much is that I now have three close friends who are TØP fans. Whenever they release new music—like this summer with their latest album, Clancy—it gives us something new to bond over and talk about.
Divine Discontent (2002) — Sixpence None the Richer*^
I don’t know how to describe the appeal of this album or the subtle pleasures of listening to Sixpence None the Richer generally, but I’ll try. The best descriptor I can think of is that their music is a polished, sophisticated blend of rock and pop for grown-ups. True, I discovered this album in my teens, but even then I could tell it had a maturity and complexity missing in much of the music to which I was accustomed. Also, Leigh Nash is one of my favorite vocalists; I would listen to any song she’s recorded at least once.
Excellent (2012) — Propaganda^
This is the album that got me into rap and hip-hop, and still one of the best things I’ve heard in the genre. The album is a call for Christians to make excellent art, because, as Propaganda explains in one of the tracks, “the presence of good art will unconsciously refine a community.”And I can testify that Prop practices what he preaches, because listening to this album has had a lasting effect on my own priorities, aspirations, and relationships, particularly with the tracks “Raise the Banner,” “Lofty,” and “Be Present.” Indeed, “Be Present” has something to do with the name of this website.
Followers (2016) — Tenth Avenue North
I’ve largely stopped listening to the latest music coming out of the mainstream Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) scene, but one of the exceptions I’ve made is for Tenth Avenue North. Followers, in particular, has meant a lot to me over the past few years. An album about relinquishing fear and anxiety, about repenting of the desire for control that causes them, and about entrusting ourselves wholly to God’s good purposes for us, Followers was a constant companion during a season when I experienced a series of panic attacks that were almost crippling. It helped me to “just stand” when I couldn’t move; to pray by giving me the words to pray; and then, once I was able, to do the next thing and then the next.
Good Monsters (2006) — Jars of Clay*^
This just might be my most favorite album. And even if it isn’t, it’s probably the best-made, most perfect and complete album on this list. Enough said.
Graceland (1986) — Paul Simon*^
Readers can gather from this list that I mostly listen to music from professing Christians who explicitly deal with theology and Christian living in their music, or at least their Christian background informs their songwriting to some significant degree. I don’t listen to many quote-unquote “secular” artists—I don’t like the term but don’t know what else to use—but among the few that I do listen to, Paul Simon rises to the top as a singer-songwriter that fascinates me. True, it’s at least somewhat because there’s a spiritual longing that suffuses his work, from his early Simon & Garfunkel days all the way down to his remarkable 2023 album, Seven Psalms. My dad introduced me to Graceland, so that also accounts for this particular album’s appeal to me.
Hello Hurricane (2009) — Switchfoot*^
This is the Switchfoot album I have found the most soothing and comforting (except for the track “Bullet Soul,” which jars me). As a mid-career project, Hello Hurricane comes closest to being my ideal Switchfoot album because it has both the musical vivacity of their early work and the lyrical maturity of their later work.
Home (2015) — Josh Garrels^
I went through a major Josh Garrels phase in 2015 when, to whet listener’s appetites for this album’s release, he briefly offered his previous albums for free on NoiseTrade. I was thinking concertedly back then about what Christian art should look like—specifically, how it should reflect God’s own delight in creating beautiful things while also grappling frankly with the brokenness of this world that God made good but man ruined. I found that Garrels captured both the mirth of God and the wonder of His works and also the ache of our being sinners who need restoration, in ourselves, in our relationships with God and others, and across the cosmos. I selected Home for this list because I think it’s Garrels’ strongest, most well-rounded studio project to date.
The Heat (2007) — NEEDTOBREATHE
Thanks to its catchy, get-stuck-in-your-head melodies and Bear Rineheart’s inimitable voice, this is the album that got me hooked on NEEDTOBREATHE. Several albums later, it may still be the best distillation of the band’s strengths. The Heat may also be the most fun album on this list, if the reader is looking to listen to something just for pure enjoyment.
Instruments of Mercy (2013) — Beautiful Eulogy^
I owe a lot to this hip-hop trio from Portland. Not only did its members found and lead the label Humble Beast, through which I also discovered the music of Propaganda, ALERT312, Sho Baraka, and others; not only did they produce Propaganda’s Excellent; but when Odd Thomas, Braille, and Courtland Urbano joined forces to form Beautiful Eulogy, they meticulously crafted three outstanding albums—Satellite Kite, Instruments of Mercy, and Worthy—each featuring tracks that have profoundly shaped how I relate to God and understand myself. If there was one album that explained the gospel and applied it to daily life with theological precision and pastoral wisdom and consummate lyrical and musical craft, it’s this one.
Invisible Empires (2011) — Sara Groves^
In a frantic, workaholic, tech-obsessed world were a multitude of distractions tempt us to forget our creaturely finitude, Invisible Empires has been to me a gentle reminder of my humanness, an assurance of God’s faithful goodness, and a refuge from the clamor and chaos.
The Long Fall Back to Earth (2009) — Jars of Clay*
Jars of Clay never did the same thing twice. With each album their sound evolved, at first migrating gradually from folk to rock—but then, after Good Monsters, they pivoted abruptly to a densely textured synth-pop with their 2006 Christmas album. That experiment was only a warm-up for this, a sprawling electronic reverie that alternates between being epic and intimate, bright and moody, hopeful and wistful. Fans of classic Jars of Clay might not care for it, but I first listened to Good Monsters and Long Fall Back to Earth in tandem—what a contrast!—and I was captivated by both.
Love Liberty Disco (1999) — Newsboys^
This is the Newsboys’ most unique and daring project, a retro-sounding concept album that defies all expectations of what a mainstream CCM band can do. Thrive may be the bands’ best album lyrically, but sonically this is their greatest achievement.
The Ministry Years, Volume 1 (1977-1979) and Volume 2 (1980-1982) (1987-1988) — Keith Green^
Before Rich Mullins, there was Keith Green. Both men left behind a landmark body of work upon their tragic early deaths, each bequeathing to the church a legacy of earnest songs of Christ-pursuing zeal and struggle that have served as guideposts for many Christian pilgrims, including me. But of the two, Green has had a longer and deeper influence on me so far, maybe because I grew up knowing more of his songs from an early age—and that is probably because Green’s songs played a role in my dad’s teenage discipleship, just as they would later do in mine.
(I’m fudging my own album-selection rules here because this is a compilation of all Green’s albums. But this collection of two volumes and four discs is the only medium through which I’ve known his music. I have never listened to the songs in the contexts of their original albums—the songs on The Ministry Years are not arranged in album order—and thus I am unable to say which of Green’s albums is the best or my favorite.)
The Narrative (2016) — Sho Baraka^
A theologically-informed crash-course in Black American history, culture, and social concerns, condensed into an hour of sophisticated rap and set to some of the best arrangements I’ve heard on any hip-hop album.
Nothing Is Sound (2005) — Switchfoot*^
This album rocked my music-listening world. Other albums have ushered in a change in my tastes in music, but no other album did so as dramatically as this one when I popped it into a portable CD player one fateful night during the first few weeks of my sophomore year of high school. It introduced me to my favorite band, got me out of the often narrow confines of the made-for-Christian-radio template, and put words to my teenage angst and unease. (I called it “Ecclesiastes set to music” at the time.) But, ultimately, it gave me hope. “It won’t be long / I belong / somewhere past this setting sun.”
Oh! Gravity. (2006) — Switchfoot*
I can never settle in my mind which of the three Switchfoot albums on this list is the band’s all-around best, but Oh! Gravity. is oh so much fun. It might be the most balanced and cohesive of the three.
Oh! Great Is Our God! (2012) — The Sing Team
With only five tracks and running less than half an hour, this is more an EP than a proper album, but it’s so fantastic and so special to me that I had to include it. I once read The Sing Team’s unique sound described as the Muppets leading worship (or something like that), and that about sums up the band’s infectious charm.
Of Vice & Virtue (2013) — ALERT312^
I admire how ALERT312, a Chicago-based Christian hip-hop group, has a commitment to making music and doing ministry among a particular people in a particular place. There’s a hyper-local specificity to their lyrics and a tribute to their Latin American roots in their percussion-heavy instrumentations. Their sound is unlike any other hip-hop that I’ve enjoyed. When I was in college, my favorite track on this album, “Jaime,” knocked my proud pretenses out from under me. I will be forever grateful for how God used it to reset “my definition of success.”
The Reckoning (2011) — NEEDTOBREATHE*^
I once met a fellow NEEDTOBREATHE fan who said of The Reckoning that “Jesus haunts that album!” That may have been an allusion to how Flannery O’Connor called the South “Christ-haunted,” and the cover photo certainly screams Southern Gothic. I’m not as sure about the “Christ-haunted” part—Bear and Bo Rineheart’s Christian upbringing is less frequently alluded to here than in some of their other albums—but I know this much: the album is haunted. It is driven by a propulsive, feverish energy and seems to have been expressly designed to be played loudly in a car roaring down a highway in the dark of night as if pursued. (For textual evidence, just consider some of the track titles: “Drive All Night”; “Maybe They’re On To Us”; “Wanted Man.”) Without a single middling track on the album, this is NTB’s audacious opus.
The Sea In Between: Audio Soundtrack (2013) — Josh Garrels & Mason Jar Music
Similar in nature to Steven Curtis Chapman’s Re:Creation, The Sea In Between is a retrospective spanning Josh Garrels’ early career. Aside from the reason that it’s the first of his albums that I listened to (incidentally and unsurprisingly, so many of the albums on this list were my first introduction to an artist or band), this may be my favorite Garrels project because it gathers together some of his best songs and because the musicians of Mason Jar Music give them an entirely acoustic treatment—in the great outdoors! (To see how they did it, check out this incredible music video for “Pilot Me,” excerpted from the documentary for which this is the soundtrack.)
6.1 (2001) — Out of the Grey*^
The husband-and-wife duo of Scott and Christine Denté may be the greatest act in 90’s Christian Contemporary Music that, it seems to me, few have heard of or remember anymore. I am most fond of 6.1, their sixth and final studio album. (They briefly came out of retirement with a crowdfunded album in 2015.)
Songs (1996) — Rich Mullins^
Rich Mullins may be the most gifted and influential singer-songwriter to have dedicated his talents toward serving the contemporary American church. And yet, though I’ve been listening to his work all my life, growing up I only listened to Songs, his first collection of greatest hits, and at the time of writing this I’ve still only listened to three of his proper albums. This is a major deficiency in my music-listening diet I hope to correct soon. In any case, Songs remains an ideal starting point for the uninitiated. (P.S.: I wrote about one of the tracks on Songs, “If I Stand,” and its rich theology of creation, for my first-ever article on this website seven years ago.)
Thrive (2002) — Newsboys*^
This album represents a lot of firsts for me. The Newsboys were my first favorite band, this was the first of their albums I listened to, and it was also one of the first albums I ever “owned”—it was a birthday gift from my parents, I think, when I turned ten. Just as Nothing Is Sound and Excellent would do in later years, Thrive signaled a turning point in my musical tastes. But it is a great album in its own right. Steve Taylor was meant to write lyrics for Newsboys and Peter Furler was meant to sing them.
Through the Deep, Dark Valley (2012) — The Oh Hellos
I really enjoy The Oh Hellos’ folk sound and exuberant energy. I include this album not for any significant biographical or thematic reason but simply for how habitually I’ve listened to it for the past seven years. It’s that good.
Uncomfortable (2015) — Andy Mineo^
This is a fun album to listen to musically and lyrically, while also being very thoughtful thematically. But I include it on this list more for two biographical reasons. First, in 2017 I spent a few weeks closely studying Uncomfortable and its predecessor, Heroes for Sale, and wrote an article about how Andy Mineo unpacks the personal and cultural implications of the gospel. Second, in one of the funnier “How on earth did I get here?” moments of my life, I found myself volunteering to “help out” at a release party for this album, held at an indoor skatepark in L.A. Somewhere out there, there is a photo of me standing awkwardly with Andy Mineo.
Who We Are Instead (2003) — Jars of Clay
For about a decade of being a Jars of Clay fan, unaccountably and regrettably I listened to very little of their music pre-Good Monsters. But then, a few years ago I shared a living space with a friend who had every Jars album from before Good Monsters, and for the first few weeks after moving in I borrowed one or two at a time to play in my car. The other early albums ranged from good to great, but Who We Are Instead blew me away. I can’t think of another time I’ve listened to an album for the first time and knew by the second go-round that it was a masterpiece and destined to be a favorite for years to come.
Worthy (2017) — Beautiful Eulogy
When this album was released I read one reviewer call it a worship album, and he was exactly right. Though the term is popularly associated with recordings of hymns and praise songs, and not at all with rap and hip-hop, this is a worship album in the greater sense that—if we listen rightly with receptive hearts—it compels us to stand in awe of God and offer Him all our devotion. Seven years later, I would be glad if Beautiful Eulogy returned with more music, but if this is to be their last album it is a fitting and elegant sign-off.
Honorable Mentions (or artists/bands that either could have been on this list or should be on its eventual sequel):
Citizens
The Grey Havens
Jon Foreman (outside of Switchfoot)
Here’s hoping there will be a “31 Books for 31 Years” article soon, and not a “32 Books for 32 Years” article later!