How can secular music become sacred when used in a liturgical setting?
First of all, I think this duality is a little bit artificial; any music that’s performed in church is sacred music. It’s all about context – hearing the same pop song at a concert, in your car, and at church are three very different experiences. I like to use pop music in worship because folks love singing music they know, and they’ll be more likely to participate in the music if the music if familiar. There are lots of ways to incorporate pop music into a service. Even if you don’t want to use an entire song, you can take a chorus that everyone knows and use it as a congregational response. For example, many churches pick a verse of a psalm and use it for an antiphon, often in some variety of plainsong, but I like to think of a pop song that resonates with the central message of the psalm and use that as an antiphon instead. I’ve used everything from the Beatles to Bob Marley to Cake to Damien Rice this way. Q. Explain how you made the choices you did for the music on your first CD,
