Passion “Burn Bright (Live From Passion 2022)” Album Review

Prime Cuts: A Thousand Hallelujahs (Featuring Brooke Ligertwood), First Love (Featuring Kari Jobe), 1,000 Names (Fearuring Sean Curran)

Overall Grade: 3/5

Passion really believes in padding. Despite a track listing of 15 songs, there are only 6 new songs here. The rest of the album is stacked with already released songs from many of their peers. This includes Crowder's "God Really loves Us," Kari Jobe's "First Love," Brooke Ligertwood's "A Thousand Hallelujahs," Cody Carnes' "Christ Be Magnified," and others. These aforementioned songs, by their own rights, are great worship tunes. But we have not come to hear a compilation album of what's hot in worship music now. This is a Passion album, what happened to giving us an album's worth of new material?

Even among the originals, three of the songs appear in two permutations, the studio and the live versions. Who are they kidding? The live version is so flawless and so note-perfect, are they really "live" versions? Or have they been studio-dubbed? If it's the latter, do we really need another studio version?

Once upon a time, Passion's album releases (normally at the beginning of the year) were events to be anticipated. Their albums  were normally choked full of great tunes, and over the years, many have become worship classics. Songs such as "Glorious Day," "Even So Come," and "God, You're So Good" are some that come to mind. However, there's nothing here of such standard here. Melodie Malone sounds superb, but she's let down by her song. "New Thing" thrives on lyrics that are pedantic, thoughtless, and unoriginal: "Like the winter turns to spring/Like the deserts turn to streams/You're doing a new thing."

Sean Curran is vocally on fire but "Maranatha," with its repetitive tag "I'm here to worship you," sounds recycled and tired. "Beautiful Jesus," with an outdated Christina Aguilera ballad feel, tries to build to a crescendo but falls flat because it does not have much of a melody to begin with. "What He's Done," again cliché-ridden, may be their best shot here.

With a full year to craft only 6 songs, is this the best the team can come up with? Have they not been fed spiritually that they must resort to overused phrases again and again? Have the large crowds that show up each year for the Passion conferences numbed their sensitivity to great tunes?  These new songs by themselves deserve a 2/5 grade, but with the added "hits" (especially Ligertwood and Jobe's cuts), it raises the grade a point upwards.

 

 

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