Wow #1s

31 of the greatest christian music hits ever! Features #1 Hits by Point of Grace, Chris Rice, Steven Curtis Chapman & Rachael Lampa. Zomba. 2005.

Here we have the ultimate artifact from the bestselling Wow series: Wow #1s: 31 of the Greatest Christian Music Hits Ever. This collection does have some great anthems, but they're the kind of tunes that anyone who's given even a cursory listen to Christian pop radio in the ‘90s or ‘00s has heard dozens of times by now. It's hard not to see this release as the result of a zeal on the part of the Wow organization to reduce contemporary Christian music to the sort of bite-sized, sales-driven, best of the best mentality that fuels so much of secular consumer culture. For the most part, the result is a blanched and overproduced mess: very little of the music remotely urban or exciting, almost all of it overly sentimental. Rather than a hearty meal, it's like eating a cake made entirely of frosting. Many if not most of the artists themselves are talented, of course, and if even one more listener can get turned on to the highly personal rock of Rich Mullins or the sublime, beyond-diva-level vocalizings of Nicole C. Mullen, that's never a bad thing. --Mike McGonigal