Music review: Legacy by Planetshakers
Music review: Legacy by Planetshakers
25 November 2017
Photo: Kaleb Nimz
Review by Colin Lane
Maybe I’m getting old … but what is happening to worship music? It’s gone to the dogs! 
Songs seem to fall into one of two categories – they are either slow, anthemic dirges to which you are supposed to close your eyes and tilt your head back and sway it from slowly from side to side while your hands wave haphazardly in the air for a ridiculously long time.
Or they are Hi-5 style pop songs with weak melodies that you are supposed to jump up and down to and shout out in the oh-oh and the woo-woo sections.
Planetshakers’ latest release, Legacy, is a case in point.
Legacy is an album of live recordings from Planetshakers’ 20th Anniversary Conference in Melbourne, and its sister conferences in Manila and Kuala Lumpur in 2017. It begins with the “woah-oh’s” of Alive Again, punctuated with the screams of what sounds like a bunch of pre-teens.
The next song, Through It All, is more bubble-gum pop, although some respectability is restored with the more mature Prophecy.
Then we get into the dirges – four in a row. Some of them begin ok and should be nicely wrapped up around the four-minute mark, but, of course, they get beyond six, eight and You Call Me Beautiful finishes just shy of 10 minutes. That’s a long time to keep your arms waving in the air. And to stay awake.
And so the album rolls – from bubble gum to treacle and back over 12 forgettable tracks.
The lyrics for these songs are so basic that they could have been written by a Grade Six student. There is nothing original here – it is just a mishmash of clichés and lines from every worship song of the past 20 years. Not a single harmony, little variation in instrumentation.
Please, worship songwriters, get your heads out of Christian-land and turn on your radios.
Please get back to writing songs that have a decent melody and hook, songs that we’ll find ourselves singing to while we walk the dog or wash the dishes, songs with a bit of groove or rock or R&B, songs that mean something and maybe even are uniquely Australian.
Is that too much to ask??
Captain Colin Lane is the Corps Officer at Frankston Corps, Victoria.
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