It is a privilege to get to connect with Steve Taylor, former songwriter for the Christian rock bank Newsboys (among other accolades) and current Assistant Professor of Film and Creative Media at Lipscomb University. A special thanks goes to my brother, Kenny Doberenz, a film student at Lipscomb, for interviewing and recording Steve for this interview.
Newsboys has been a favorite band of mine since my family “discovered” Christian music sometime in the early 2000s. Their quirky style and catchy beats quickly find its way into your heart—and your brain with their fine selection of earworms. As I’ve gotten older, however, I’ve noticed how much rich theology is located behind the silly lyrics. Particularly, many of their songs have a strong sense of mission, evangelism, and the importance of the Christian witness in the world.
After listening to my Newsboys playlist on Amazon Music, I had some questions about how good theology and ridiculous rhymes come together. Luckily, thanks to my brother Kenny’s connection with Steve, I got to find some answers. This article combines the interview with my own thoughts on theology in their music.
Steve Taylor and the Newsboys
Steve Taylor first got involved in the Newsboys while a part of a band signed with a mainstream record label, but they were trying to get out of the deal. Anything they recorded would belong to the record label they wanted to escape. Steve recalls, “We were stuck in a hiatus.” Around that time, a friend who headed a Christian label connected him with a Christian band from Australia who had “a lot of potential” and worked really hard.
This band, the Newsboys, sent over a song they were working on called “I’m Not Ashamed.” Steve recalls, “The lyrics were pretty bad. I think the original lyrics for “I’m Not Ashamed” was ‘I’m not ashamed to let you know, I have no fear of man or foe.’” Steve asked Peter Furler, who at that time was the drummer, did some singing, and co-wrote some of the songs, if he could produce this song. Impressed with that, he ended up helping with the whole album and joining the Newsboys for several years of songwriting.
It is Taylor that contributed most to the content of the songs. “Most of the time Peter [Furler] would write the melodies and pass it on to me and I would write the lyrics,” Taylor told Kenny. Explaining the process, he remarked, “The idea was to try to make them distinctive and offbeat, but that they would always—the theology was really important.”
In all the songs the band sang, Taylor watched for good theology. He gave an example of one Newsboys song that he did not write, the song “You Are My King (Amazing Love)” from their album Adoration: The Worship Album (2003). He recalls the line: “Amazing love, I know its true. It’s my joy to honor you. In all I do, I honor you.” Taylor reacted strongly to this line, commenting, “That is blatantly incorrect! ‘In all I do, I honor you.’ Well, no, we don’t always honor God when we are doing something wrong. So I changed it to ‘In all I do, to honor you’ because that’s aspirational.” Taylor confessed he changed the lyric without permission: “I just didn’t want bad theology going out into the world. Not on my watch.”
In a time where there is a lot of bad theology being propagated on the internet and in various Christian media, I greatly appreciate Taylor’s commitment to good theology! Even though he writes crazy songs, he made sure that when talking about God he did God justice. He didn’t want to say anything false just because it sounded nice.
Occasionally, however, fun lyrics trumped meaningful theology, though that doesn’t mean the songs would promote “bad” theology. Taylor and the Newsboys still liked to create fun songs. One of the Newsboys songs that is the epitome of ridiculousness is the song “Breakfast” from the album Take Me To Your Leader (1996). Taylor remembers writing it somewhere in South Carolina, on a break to get away and write new lyrics. He started with the line “Hold the milk, put back the sugar.” From there, he says, “I just thought that would be a fun idea about an actual song that served as an obituary for someone, someone who was young and had died, like high school-aged.”
That got him imagining. However, he needed the person the song focused on to be interesting. Next thing he knows, he is getting all this cereal-based imagery. Then early on he comes up with the line, “They don’t serve breakfast in Hell.” That tied the bow around the song. Originally the title was going to be “Breakfast in Hell” but they shortened it to “Breakfast” because they weren’t sure if they could get away with calling a song “Breakfast in Hell.” Thus, what is perhaps the most legendary song about breakfast cereal was born.
You can also see Steve Taylor’s commitment to good lyrics in another song about Hell. Steve laments that he was talked into doing the song “Boycott Hell” which he begged them not to put on the album I’m Not Ashamed (1992). Ultimately, the band wanted it to stay so it did. In an act of ingenious and hilarious protest, one night Taylor went into the studio and recorded a rap part which he put in the middle of the song to make fun of it. Though it was a joke, the band loved it! Surprisingly, the record label loved the inserted rap too. Honestly, I think the song is fine, though I admit the premise is weird.
Taylor’s rap goes as follows:
Guess who comin’ through with a little disclaimer. Tune’s OK but the words are gettin’ lamer. Ain’t no saint can legitimize Rhymin’ “pride” with “time” with “unionize”. See I agree we oughta boycott hell, But we oughta boycott dumb lyrics as well.
Taylor agreed that boycotting dumb lyrics is still a task in Christian music today.
Theology in Newsboys Songs
But when my brother arranged to talk to Taylor, what I really wanted to focus on is the idea of “mission” in Newsboys songs. Their album Go (2006) especially intentionally deals with these themes. This album is one of the first Newsboys albums I remember being released while growing up, and it’s honestly one of my favorites. Now with theological training, I think I can approve it on that front too.
Describing the intention to theme it, Taylor said, “That came from Peter and his Pastor at the time. …We had a meeting with Peter and his pastor and [we] talked about missions and thought it would be interesting to namecheck some important missionaries.” After coming up with the initial idea, it was at first difficult to come up with something interesting and not boring. “That was the trick on that one, trying to make it reasonably catchy, tuneful, and still get across what they wanted to get across.”
“Wherever We Go” on the album Go is in one sense autobiographical about the Newsboys but is also about all of our Christian duties. Furler, Taylor thinks, first came up with the lyric “wherever we go, that’s where the party’s at” but Taylor took in a wild direction. Though I noticed a lot of nature themes and the explicit line “wherever we go …the ozone layer shows improvement,” Taylor confesses they weren’t really making a case that Christians should improve the environment. However, I can easily make the case that us acting Christ-like includes not forsaking the planet God gave us. But for Taylor, the song was in the tradition of Kanye West and hip-hop artists who brag a lot on their track. Taylor remarks: “I thought it would be funny to take that to an absurd point with a band that shouldn’t be bragging about anything—and how far could we push that and would people get it?”
On the album, the titular song “Go” and also “Mission” are two others that specifically evoke a sense of mission. “Go” is from God’s perspective, urging us to go out, like the Great Commission says. “Mission” is similar, but is “almost like a little history lesson,” Taylor remembers. If you look at the lyrics, you’ll spot many references to famous missionaries or missionary efforts. Personally, I love putting our mission experience in connection with global efforts throughout history. The song begins by discussing the witnesses of Jesus’ birth telling others and throughout the song includes much more recent efforts. All those people spread the good news they witnessed–just as we continue to do 2,000 years later!
However, the Newsboys recognize that evangelism isn’t easy. Though it predates Go, the song “I’m Not Ashamed” (the first song Taylor worked on) tries to dismantle some ways people attempt to escape the call to “Go.” Check out these hard-hitting lyrics: “What are we sneaking around for? Who are we trying to please? Shrugging off sin, apologizing like we’re spreading some kind of disease.” Or the other verse: “This one says it’s a lost cause, Save your testimony for church time. The other ones state you’d better wait until you do a little market research.”
But among these excuses, the song states: “I’m not ashamed to let you know. I want this light in me to show. I’m not ashamed to speak the name of Jesus Christ.” Taylor thinks this song and its message is still relevant—even in the face of reports from Barna Group that state over half of adult Americans think certain evangelistic activities are somewhat or very “extremist.”
The song’s message has a lot of personal relevance to Taylor. He was working on the song just as he was exiting his previous band. “One of our biggest arguments in that band was that we didn’t want to get tagged as a Christian band. So we ended up getting into a massive argument even about if to play a Christian festival or not.” In the middle of those tense arguments, he was working with the Newsboys that has this song that said explicitly where they stand: “I’m not ashamed to speak the name of Jesus Christ.” As he wrote the verses to the song, he was thinking about the arguments his previous band had. “A lot of that was behind my thinking in the lyrics.”
Steve Taylor no longer writes songs for the Newsboys. He has collaborated with Peter Furler on the song “Closer” on Furler’s solo album On Fire 2011 and he worked on one song for the album “Newsboys: United.” Taylor is busy making movies, teaching aspiring film students, and finding other ways for a creative outlet. Though he’s not creating silly songs for an Australian band, he still is on a mission to proclaim God using his talents.
Again, thank you to Kenny Doberenz for doing the interview. Steve, if you are reading this, give him an A+ in the class! Also, follow Kenny on Twitter at @Doberenz_K for humorous tweets and the occasional movie insight. Tweet at Kenny and I (@JDoberenz) your favorite Newsboys song!
Steve Taylor has an impressive resume with a wide selection of Grammy, Billboard, Telly, Addy and Dove nominations and awards. He’s directed several music videos, including the hit video for Sixpence None the Richer’s song “Kiss Me.” He’s directed the Newsboys movie Down Under The Big Top (1996), The Second Chance (2005), and Blue Like Jazz (2012) based off of Donald Miller’s bestselling book by the same name. More recently he started a band called Steve Taylor and the Perfect Foil. At Lipscomb University (Nashville, TN), he is currently Assistant Professor of Film & Creative Media and Director of School of Theatre and Cinematic Arts.
