I was sitting recently, listening to Derek Webb’s album She Must and Shall Go Free. It’s an album. It has great individual songs on it, but it is a cohesive unit, 11 or 12 (I can’t remember) songs that form a flow of thought. It’s a wonderful thing. Caedmon’s Call’s 40 Acres feels like this (as does Share the Well), Andrew Peterson’s Love and Thunder feels this way, and the best example (in my favorites) is Rich Mullins’s A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band.

I love listening to albums that are albums. MP3 players, Itunes, winamp, and all those other convenient things with those shuffle buttons have kind of ruined albums for us. We hear whatever song randomly comes next (or, in the case of Itunes new Genius function, whatever song they think sounds good to follow up the song you’re listening to). We don’t usually sit down to listen through an album; we let music be the background we do things to, and we don’t exactly catch any continuity.

So, sometime this week, turn off the shuffle feature and listen to an album. You might find that the artist put some thought into the direction that the songs take you. That’s the sort of stuff that makes an album worth paying for.

Rich Mullins was an incredible musician / writer / believer. He inspired a generation of musicians and artists to aim for a higher level of artistry in their work. He may have rubbed shoulders with people who wrote cheesy, useless songs, but he didn’t cut corners when he wrote. He died over ten years ago, before I knew anything about him other than that he wrote Awesome God and Step by Step.

My favorite album of his is titled A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band. It is the most album-like album I’ve ever listened to. Each piece fits. I never feel like a song is out of place. I never want to press skip. (My wife disagrees with me, there’s a track she doesn’t like and skips every time… but variety is the spice of life? Or she’s wrong. Right… Spice of life.)

So, I’d encourage you to go buy the album if  you don’t have it already. While you contemplate that purchase, here’s The Color Green from Liturgy, Legacy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhGOosxTLrY]