Every artist, band and even church has those great songs. For instance, ZZ Top has tons of songs but they’re not all Sharp Dressed Man, Give Me All Your Lovin’ or Tush. Even our hymnals are full of songs, but probably only contain about 15 songs of the How Great Thou Art caliber. (That’s my favorite hymn, FYI)

The tendency of most audiences is to want to hear the GREAT songs. Why? Because they’re GREAT! It’s a no brainer. But too much of a good thing (or a great thing) can quickly turn into a bad thing.

My wife and I were talking, the other day, about how great the song Tik Tok by Ke$ha is. (leave me alone, it’s my website!) However, the song was way overplayed on top 40 radio and we don’t really care to hear it anymore. It was too much of a great song.

On the other hand, there are good songs. These are songs that get the job done, but aren’t terrible. Yes, there are terrible songs. I can’t tell you how to identify a great, good or terrible song… but your natural intuition should help.

I do a song at our church that is a great song… it’s called The Lamb Has Overcome (it’s from a Travis Cottrell album). The song is INCREDIBLE. I could do it every week… and then I would kill it. But I have another song that I do called Everyone (Praises) by New Life Worship. It’s not a great song, but it’s good enough to be in our catalogue. The latter song’s purpose is to keep our great songs (like the former) from becoming stale and overdone.

Let me encourage you to find some easy to accomplish GOOD songs to keep your catalog feeling fresh and your great songs GREAT.

Let me end with a tip. If you have multiple services, you will feel like your overdoing songs when you probably aren’t. At Bethany, we hear the songs in Thursday rehearsal, Sunday soundcheck and in two services. That’s basically a 4:1 ratio of how many times our church folks hear the songs… so don’t get discouraged. Find those good songs, toss them in your services and you should be good.

Blessings!