Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Charles Wolff on August 21, 2019 at 2:00pm

Welcome to WtR... I'm afraid you'll find this is not a real active site - some of my comments on other songs that you responded to were written in 2015... but in the spirit of "original songs are not easy to write..." here are some things that get a little bit deeper into the whole craft of writing worship songs. Take what you need, leave the rest...

Reading through the lyric, it does violate one of my "pet peeves" - it starts out referring to God as "He" and then in the bridge and last chorus, changes to "You." I know there are lots of popular worship songs that do this, but I think that's a weakness. Especially, in this case, since the song is called "Forever You Are" and then starts out by talking about God as "He." And using "you" to refer to the listener.  In fact, it changes rather abruptly going into the bridge...

Here's a little "worship song" thing - in this lyric, verse 1 and verse 2 start out with the same words, and that makes it difficult to direct a congregation if you're trying to stretch the song out... if the songleader calls out "Inside the throne room..." the congregation (and maybe more importantly, the person sitting in the back running the lyrics projector) doesn't know which verse you're planning on singing. Verse 1 and verse 2 are different lengths, but I don't find that a problem as long as the music adjusts to that without sounding clumsy.

I might also mention that this song is addressed to the nonbeliever ("if you open up and pray He'll enter in...") and in the worship genre, you're generally trying to... umm, put words into the mouths of a congregation that is already Christians, so I would consider this to be a bit more of an "evangelistic" song than a "worship" song.

The other lyrical issue I have with this one is the use of "Presidents" in the bridge, just because at the current point in history, there are Christians who think our current president is so great and others who think he is... not so great. Even though the message of the bridge is that "even presidents will have to bow before you," right now I am not comfortable with the use of the word "president" in a worship song. The traditional expression is "rulers and kings" and I don't think that the use of the word "president" here makes this a better lyric.

Reading the lyric, I would expect this to be a rather upbeat song, exciting song but when I listen, I hear sort of a disco ballad thing going on. Wish the vocals were louder. A plus for not dragging out the intro, you start singing at :23 ... long intros may work in a live situation if this is the fifth song in the worship set, but listening to a demo recording to decide if I'd want to use a song for our band, not so much.

I will give you credit for doing some chord pattern variation in here... i.e., it's not just the same Imaj7 - IVmaj7 pattern repeated over and over through the whole song.

Something to be aware of - it's not a major problem, but in a few spots, I think the word that gets emphasized by falling on the beat is the wrong word. For example, in the first line of the bridge, the word that falls on the beat is "will" and that's probably the one word in the second half of that line that could be kinda glossed over. Figure out how to sing it so that "bow" falls on the beat and gets emphasized. There are actually only a couple spots where this happens, but part of the job of the songwriter is to polish up those little spots so that every time the song gets sung, it's right.

Overall, it's a pleasant enough song, but any given "worship song" is competing with thousands of other new worship songs, and, for me, little issues like the "He" vs. "You" thing are enough to make me move on to the next youtube video or song in the songbook, 'cause when I'm picking out a song to use with our church band, I know something will come along where everything just fits together perfectly and we'll use that one. So it's not that anything is terribly wrong with this song, I'm just trying to point out some of the stuff I noticed. As I said, take what you need and leave the rest...

Permalink Reply by Rev. Matt Fontana on August 21, 2019 at 3:12pm

My take on the second verse is to maybe change it from eliminating the first two lines and going straight to that part as a pre-chorus after the first verse. There needs to be some work on the chords for the sake of keeping everything from sounding the same.

Permalink Reply by Spencer Courtis on September 19, 2022 at 11:29pm

Hi Justin - would you have the most recent version of this your song?

Blessings - Spencer