We’ll get a CCM song over 5 yet…
[Video]
[4.57]
Brad Shoup: Where non-devotional Christian pop once tacked after country lite, now it seems someone realized what dance music was lusting for all these decades. It’s still dance as filtered through Katy Perry (though the titular phrase is phrased much like that in David May’s “Superstar”), but whatevs: the Holy Spirit is given ultimate agency, and the acoustic bits are for when life gets draggy, which is true.
[5]
Patrick St. Michel: Maybe I’ve just burned out on generic “believe in yourself!” pop, but “Overcomer” stands out from the self-help song crowd because of how directly religious it is. It is completely generic pop, but the fact Mandisa directly sings “God is holding you right now” makes this more interesting to me than the generic rah-rah boringness of, like, “Roar.”
[5]
Iain Mew: Like “Roar,” but sung like the singer knows what the words mean, told with something other than clichés, and directed to “you” instead of “I.” God or no, it’s an improvement.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: The Stacie Orrico strategy for 2013: set your CCM to “Teenage Dream” — the Katy Hudson strategy, if you will — get on K-LOVE, become fishers of iHeartRadio.
[5]
David Turner: Before high school my only church experiences were in Baptist/AME Zion services. “Overcomer” isn’t that. Mandisa trades the historical power of traditional gospel music for the most saccharine pop. A black female Contemporary Christian singer was certainly nothing I saw in high school, when I heard the phrase “praise team” on a regular basis, so I admire seeing a face of recognizable color. But maybe we can let whites continue to hold onto what remains the blandest cornbread of music inspired by the Christian faith.
[3]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Here be the “inspirational” preset.
[4]
Anthony Easton: That Mandisa sings this as a gift to God after recovering from cancer kind of makes it critic-proof. That it features a long history of specifically African American theological discourse suggests that critics who are not African American have to be very careful. Gospel is a genre where it is really easy to get caught in critical traps. There is a tendency in listening to gospel to find a place in history for it to be more authentic, and therefore better. There is a tendency for white theologians, especially American Protestants, to concentrate on the burden or struggle of faith in a kind of sanctified riff on Greg Tate’s main thesis. Grace is a difficult subject, and being thankful to the divine figure always rubs against a WASP discourse that suggests that religion should be quiet and private. To not like this song is to unpack questions, then, of theology, race, desire, and the ongoing bete noires of earnestness and sincerity. Mandisa has a decent voice, and the production is both expansiveness and ambitious, which suggests a desire for crossover — but it doesn’t hide her light under a bushel, which is well appreciated. I think this track’s important, but I just can’t quite get around to liking it.
[4]