Popularity of God and Rebecca St James songs

How much can you derive from guitar tabs popularity? I don't know actually, but when I'd run into a page with Rebecca St James guitar tabs on christianguitar.org, I noticed that not only did it list 33 RSJ songs but also the number of customer views for each song. I am not aware of any RSJ Lyrics pages keeping counters of the number of people having requesting them, and it seemed to me that guitar tabs for RSJ songs are pretty useful as indication for the popularity of these songs in general. (PS. The bass tabs for RSJ songs are clearly much less requested, so I ignore these; what I know about a bass guitar is that it basically is a guitar with only the first 4 strings - from that point of view I can understand why it is far less popular;-).

First some technical remarks:

• Some songs appear twice in the list - for instance because 2 people posted their own tab version. As we can safely assume that people consulting the least popular tab version have also looked at the most popular one, I only noted down the highest rank and ignored the lowest one (I did not add up the two numbers).
• I also did not take into account the date of creation of these tabs, as I could not see any substantial corrections arising from that information (e.g. a song like God Of Wonders scores very high in spite of having been added relatively late).
• The numbers look reliable to me, as the number of views does not increase each time I reload the same page (in other words, proper IP-filtering is implemented behind the counters).

Following is the list of 33 songs (=song tabs) as I discovered it on January 27, 2008, with just the number of people that requested these so far, and ordered with the highest ranking songs on top. The album names and their publication date were added by myself.

	Song (Album)	Hits
1	Breathe (Worship God, 2002, 3)	24,605
2	Song Of Love (Worship God, 2002, 2)	17,597
3	Blessed Be Your Name (Live Worship, 2004, 2)	13,301
4	God Of Wonders (Worship God, 2002, 4)	12,103
5	Abba (Father) (God, 1996, 5)	12,068
6	Above All (Worship God, 2002, 6)	11,243
7	Wait For Me (Transform, 2000, 8)	10,660
8	Lamb Of God (Live Worship, 2004, 1)	10,115
9	Go and Sin No More (God, 1996, 10)	8,738
10	Speak To Me (God, 1996, 4)	6,874
11	God (God, 1996, 1)	5,440
12	Yes I Believe In God (Wait for Me, 2003, 7)	5,096
13	A Cold Heart Turns (God, 1996, 9)	4,930
14	Psalm 139 (God, 1996, 11)	4,788
15	Hold Me Jesus (Pray, 1998, 4)	4,563
16	Pray (Pray, 1998, 1)	4,467
17	Reborn (Transform, 2000, 3)	3,193
18	You're The Voice (God, 1996, 2)	3,068
19	Universe (Transform, 2000, 7)	3,017
20	Don' Worry (Transform, 2000, 4)	2,970
21	Omega (Pray, 1998, 11)	2,876
22	I'll Carry You (Pray, 1998, 5)	2,456
23	And We Behold Him (Refresh My Heart, 1991, 10)	2,437
24	Carry Me High (God, 1996, 8)	2,426
25	More Than the Watchmen (Worship God, 2002, 9)	2,389
26	Peace (Pray, 1998, 7)	2,302
27	Give Myself Away (Pray, 1998, 3)	2,239
28	A Cradle Prayer (Christmas, 1997, 10)	2,228
29	You Then Me (God, 1996, 3)	2,089
30	Come Quickly, Lord (Pray, 1998, 6)	1,891
31	Hero (!Hero movie, 2003)	1,835
32	OK (Pray, 1998, 2)	1,728
33	Hope's Song (2003, Veggietales)	1,146

 

Of course these numbers of views cannot give us a totally straightforward picture.

(a) First of all, these can only be statistics of guitar music lovers. But I think they represent the Rebecca St James supporters quite well. I don't think that someone who loves to play an instrument would, for instance, typically pay less attention to the content of a song. Players of an instrument are attracted by the whole 'feeling' of a song so it seems to me. That makes sense, it is a fair parameter and is related to what the song represents.

(b) Another issue: there are no tabs for all of the RSJ songs. But popular songs are more likely to be tabbed, so this is also okay. Missing tabs may, of course, indicate that these are more difficult songs, technically speaking. On the other hand: many of the available tabs here are not much more than a quick attempt to catch the idea of the song with a few chords - they are the work of amateurs. That is okay, as I am not on the lookout for the best tab writings, I'm just looking at the number or people who showed interest in these songs.

I must add to this, that I suspect certain songs, such as Pray, to be by definition less popular in terms of guitar tabs. Songs like that may very probably sound too complex to play. So we could hardly conclude from the position of Pray (halfway the list) that prayer is not popular among Christians. My 'analysis' will therefore be very limited - avoiding all 'conclusions from the negative'.

(c) Another issue becomes clear when we look at the score of a song like You're The Voice, which has, compared with other songs, a inconceivable low 3,068 number of views. This is not quite conform with the perception that this song has always been very popular at concerts. This low rate may be explained by the fact that the song was not written by Rebecca herself (the song is originally from John Farnham's album Whispering Jack) so tabs for this song may already have existed and been consulted at other web sites.

(d) Also, you can easily see that uploading tabs stopped with the Live Worship album, which appeared in 2004. We must not conclude from it that RSJ songs are not popular anymore after 2004, or that Christians don't like to play guitar since that time. Maybe the Christian Guitar site has become too outmoded, or maybe the counters don't work that well anymore.

Some interesting points

There are some interesting points anyway.

(1) The top 3 is very, very Rebecca-esque if I may say so: Breathe and Blessed Be Your Name are definitely songs very much loved by Rebecca herself, while Song Of Love is one of those real 'statements' of Rebecca, one that will bring back into memory this wonderful video clip with the great, peaceful and God-loving expression on Rebecca's face. It is one of those songs that make people fall in love with God.

I found it breathtaking that Breathe was at the very top of the list - as is my own top-favorite song (together with Yes I Believe In God, to be honest - that one is lower in the list, much to my surprise).

(2) I've been thinking why Yes I Believe In God could be so relatively low in the list - at least compared to what I would have expected. This song is so powerful, so encouraging, it is the kind of song any Christian would want to memorize (and singing or playing it is one nice way to memorize a song). Would this kind of song possibly put the targets too high? I don't think so. Is it musically less attractive? Certainly not.

What strucks me is the fact that the 8 first songs (=those amounting over 10,000 hits) are, with the exception of Wait For Me, clearly powerful worship songs. Of course, many of Rebecca's songs are worship songs; but songs like Yes I Believe In God, Pray and so on are more meant to enhearten the soul directly, to encourage us to walk our ways with God. Worship is more like the result of being encouraged this way.

It could also be a sign that the album Transform did not sell so well - it is generally lower in the list. (Notice that I added the album titles myself, based on the firsts appearance of the song - so the song Wait For Me may, for instance, be known from the Wait For Me: The Best From Rebecca St. James (2003) album, not from the Transform (2000) album. I have my doubts, though, as Transform is really a formidable, almost perfect album. There is no reason why it would be missing in someone's collection.

Anyway: Worship gets growing attention and this seems to be reflected in these statistics. It confirms that people - including the often young people who buy Rebecca's music, are aware that a true relationship with God is very important. Of course, it then also confirms that Rebecca's message, her mission, is working out as she would have hoped for. Rebecca's popularity is certainly an undeniable factor, but from these statistics you could conclude that the number of times that Rebecca points her forefinger towards God (Larry Norman style) during her concerts, has had the right effect so to speak. She managed to make God the real popular One for those who love her music. (Of course, such a conclusion can, strictly speaking,  not be founded just on 'page hits', but on the other hand: there is no argument either why the conclusion would be false).

(3) Another point: Wait For Me is a worship song! - Okay, this conclusion is 'over the top'. It is (unprofessionally) based on my previous remark that the first 8 songs are worship songs. But... isn't it true after all? Wait For Me is, strictly speaking, one of those songs in the category 'encouraging' songs - but it clearly is a very special one in that genre. It is marriage-related, so it inevitably also reminds us of the relationship of the Christian Church with God as a Husband (as explained in many Bible verses). The fact that sexual purity is, in Rebecca's mission as well as in common Biblical understanding, linked with purity of thoughts in general, is just another way of saying the same thing: all Christian relationship starts with the question about how we relate to God. And today, in the Western world in particular, almost no one may be capable of waiting for a darling if such a waiting would not be established upon making God our beloved one, spiritually. Without this passion, human passions are hardly manageable anymore for most people in the kind of societies we are living in.

If you are like me, than Wait For Me is a song who can break you or make you. If I think about the things I don't have, the song tends to breaks me (in reality: not the song is doing this, but me not responding to it in the right way - after all, the song clearly put us before God, and in that confrontation, God is by very definition the strongest unless we 'freely' decide to ignore Him). If, however, I think about the promises of God, and the love of God, the fact that I should believe that God is trustworthy, then Wait For Me can 'make' me. It is a strange relationship, because even when it 'makes' me, it may somehow enforce me to hope for the best - and in the end, still 'break' me. This is always the case in matters of trust of course. If you allow (God) to put your expectations high, you ought to know what you are doing. If you really want to wait for something - and to wait for God in the first place - you make yourself dependant of this God.

But - no matter how far exactly you go or don't go with this song, it clearly is not the average 'Everyday Love song. It is a love song with the backbone of a Hymn. It has a strong overtone of Worship.

In conclusion: this song list and the stats seem to harmonize quite accurately with the common expectations most of us have with regard to Rebecca's work. Maybe some other thoughts could be added to this, I did not intend to do a real comprehensive analysis. But it encourages me that we, Christians, seem to be attracted to the same kind of songs and very probably for the same reasons. In fact we are attracted to God, to Jesus. This sounds so simple, but there is the beauty of simplicity in that. It is such a fundamental thing for Christians to be really attracted to God.

And, in my opinion, no one does really want to play or sing such songs if God does not mean anything to him or her.