Contemporary Christian Music
In the late 1990s a genre of music, unknown to most of America, began push its way onto the popular American music scene. Contemporary Christian Music or CCM traced its roots to Southern Gospel and Gospel music, but only began to be noticed by a larger audience when the music industry changed the way it tracked record sales in the mid-1990s.
In the late 1960s, Capitol Records hassled a blond hippie named Larry Norman for wanting to call his record We Need a Whole LotMore of Jesus and a Lot Less Rock and Roll. In response, Norman decided to make and distribute his own records. Norman's records shocked the religious and irreligious alike. He mixed his strict adherence to orthodox Christianity with honest cultural observations in songs like "Why Don't You Look into Jesus," which included the lines "Gonorrhea on Valentines Day, You're still looking for the perfect lay, you think rock and roll will set you free but honey you'll be dead before you're 33."
Before long Norman's dreams of artistic freedom had become a nightmare when executives took over and created CCM the genre which, unlike the artists who dreamed of singing songs about Jesus for non-Christians, quickly focused on marketing the records to true believers.
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