Majestic Silver Strings
Buddy Miller
New West Records
Country
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The Valley
Eisley
Equal Vision Records
Indie Rock
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Amazon

Costs
Gideon
Facedown Records
Hardcore
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Amazon

Hundred More Years
Francesca Battistelli
Fervent Records
Pop
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Amazon

Set On Fire
Purified
Purified Ministries
Rap
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March EP
Sleeping At Last
Independent
Atmospheric Rock
(available at sleepingatlast.com)

Live: Inside and In Between
Tenth Avenue North
Reunion Records
Pop Rock
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Amazon

Alert-”All I See Is Red”

Heath McNease-”The House Always Wins”

American Idol Season 10 has chosen their Top 24 and now it is our turn.  Next Tuesday, the Top12  guys will perform on Tuesday night and the Top12 girls will perform on Wednesday night.  Then America votes and Ryan Seacrest will take us down to the American Idol Season 10 Top 12 on Thursday.   At One21music we cover American Idol from a Christian perspective, highlighting Christian performers while we enjoy all of the competitors’ journeys.  So far we have identified six Christians vying for the title of Season 10 American Idol:

Ashton Jones

Kendra Chantelle Campbell

Lauren Alaina

Scott McCreery

Jacob Lusk

Ta-Tynisa Wilson

Jacob Lusk is an other worldly singer, maybe a male Aretha Franklin.  We hope to see him for many weeks, but is American Idol ready for a male Aretha?  Scott McCreery is surprising engaging for a 17 year-old high school country singer. He looks like an early contender.  We very much like Ashton Jones but we worry about the prospects for a mid-20′s R&B singer on American Idol. We hope that Kendra Chantelle and Ta-Tynisa Wilson have an opportunity to assert their talent.  Lauren Alaina has been highly touted from the beginning of American Idol Season 10.  She should also be considered an early favorite. We were extremely disappointed and surprised the Colton Dixon fell short of the Top 24.  From the performances shown on American Idol Season 10, Colton Dixon was easily one of the Top 5 guys.  Alas, we will not be able vote on Colton’s fate.  Maybe he will return next year.

In addition to these six Christian performers, the remaining, very talented, performers who will start singing next week on American Idol Season 10 are:

Brett Loewenstern
Casey Abrams
Clint Jun Gamboa
Stefano Langone
James Durbin
Jordan Dorsey
Jovany Barreto
Julie Zorrilla
Karen Rodriguez
Lauren Turner
Naima Adedapo
Pia Toascano
Rachel Zevita
Robbie Rosen
Haley Reinhart
Paul MacDonald
Thia Megia

Brett Lowenstern, Casey Abrams, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia are some of the most interesting of these performers but we wonder if American Idol Season 10 voters will get them.  We think Paul MacDonald is the most interesting of these 18 performers and he could continue the streak of male rockers to win American Idol.

Join us Tuesday and Wednesday as we live blog the performances.  Enjoy the ride.

Wow, how awesome is this for you guys! Our boy Heath McNease is offering up his last album, The Gun Show for free over at Sphere Of Hip-Hop! If you will remember, this album made our best of the year lists, including our Top 25 Recordings Of 2010!

Knowing all that I dont think I need to explain that we LOVE this album. The Gun Show is an amazing mix of intellegent, quirky hip-hop, earnest sunshine pop, and humorous hyphy. Thats alot to say you would be silly to not download this album right NOW!

DO IT!

Download Heath McNease-The Gun Show

Haunts
Bare Branches
Independent
Shoe Gaze/Indie Rock
Buy NOW:
Bandcamp

Hope Of Glory
Chris Clayton
Catapult Music
Contemporary
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Amazon MP3

Best Of Gloucester County
Danielson
Sounds Familyre
Indie
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Amazon

The House Always Wins
Heath McNease
7 Spin Music
Folk Pop
Buy NOW:
Amazon MP3

Hold Me EP
Jamie-Grace
Gotee Records
Pop/Hip-Hop
Buy NOW:
Amazon MP3

Well, we made through American Idol Season 10‘s  Hollywood week.  There was not as much craziness, but there was a little drama, more than a few meltdowns and some unusually great performances.  Through it all, several Christian artists made names for themselves.  One 21 music has been covering American Idol since Season 8.  Unlike some sites who exist to mock and deride these dreamers, we look for and feature Believers who are working to reach their destinies’ through the gauntlet that is known as American Idol.

In last week’s post American Idol Season 10 on One 21 Music, we identified five Christians who are working their way through American Idol Season 10.  The past week we did not see much of Brittany Mazur, Tiwan Strong or Jimmie Allen.  However, Colton Dixon made a huge statement during Hollywood Week when he rose above a bad group to become the only member to move on to the solo round.  Colton Dixon confirmed the judges confidence with his solo performance of “What About Now”.

Ashton Jones made a big name for herself during Hollywood Week.  First of all, she led her group to patiently wait for Ashley Sullivan to go through an emotional breakdown, quit American Idol Season 10 and then return to the group.  Ashton and her group waited for hours while Sullivan left them hanging, unable to rehearse.  When she returned, Ashton and the others openly embraced Ashley.  All four members of the group made it through to the next round.  The next day Ashton Jones set herself up as one of the early favorites to win American Idol Season 10 with her raw, unbridled take on “And I Am Telling You”.

Several other Christian artists emerged during Hollywood Week.

Kendra Chantelle was invisible until she burst out in the solo audition round of American Idol Season 10 with a crushing version of “Georgia On My Mind.”  This Tennessee girl is a working back-up singer and live music performer working in Nashville to find her first record contract.  Kendra Chantelle bills herself as a R&B, blues singer with a penchant for 80′s rock.  We are not sure what that means but we liked what we heard on American Idol Season 10′s Thursday night show.  She was raw, rough but controlled. Her facebook page has been dramatically scrubbed but the version we saw, Kendra Chantelle openly proclaimed her faith.

Jacob Lusk brought American Idol Season 10 to its knees on Thursday night with his rendition of “God Bless the Child.”  Flaunting a mind boggling range, Jacob Lusk brought the entire theater to their feet, including the judges, in a stomping, screaming shouting ovation for his tour de force performance.  The bloggers blew up the Internet with their praise for the deep, spiritually moving performance.  Jacob Lusk is a member at Lester Barrie Enterprises and was a featured performer at the Spiritual Experience Celebration 2010 with gospel stars Vanessa Bell Armstrong and Ben Tankard.  Yeah, we know he makes faces but he is one of the biggest talents we have ever seen on American Idol.

Then there is the heartbreaking/warming story of Jacee Chipccon Badeaux.  There is not much information about this 15 year-old on the Internet, which is a good thing, but we have heard that he is a believer.  During the group round, Jacee was unceremoniously dismissed from his group during the middle of the night.  In danger of falling out of the competition,  Jacee Chipccon Badeaux wandered the hotel ballroom searching for a place in of the already formed groups.  None of the 39 groups were interested in starting over with a new member at a time when they should be finalizing their performances.  That was until one our favorite American Idol Season 10 personalities, Brett Lowenstein welcomed Jacee into their group.  Now that Jacee had another chance, he had only a few hours to learn “Mercy” a song he had never heard.  The judges took sympathy on his plight and passed him through, despite a shaky performance, and now he is in the American Idol Season 10 Top 60.

We are in the final stretch to American Idol Season 10 live performances.  Wednesday American Idol Season 10 takes us to Las Vegas for a round of The Beatles performances at the home of Cirque du Soleil‘s Love. On Thursday American Idol will go live to announce the Season 10 Top 24.

Join us on Thursday for the live results.  If you know of any other believers in the Top 60 please drop us a note so we can add them to our featured list of Christians on American Idol Season 10.

As They Sleep-”Oracle of the Dead”

Dirt-”Mustard Seed”

The Ember Days-”It Is Well”

Decipha-”Im Not”

This is exactly what it looks like. A hip-hop EP based on the show Justified:

The creative minds at Syntax Records have come together in full force to create a five song EP entitled “Syntax Records is Justified” inspired by the FX show Justified. With the premiere of the show’s second season premiering tonight at 10 p.m., Syntax is offering the EP as a free download.

“The two main ingredients of Justified are country-living and street life which is what I know the least about” admittedly says Tim Trudeau, President of Syntax Records, “However once we were in the studio we were able to commandeer these fictitious characters and essentially let them write these songs.”

Justified is based on the works of crime novelist Elmore Leonard, including Leonard’s short story Fire in the Hole. It follows fictional character Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens getting tangled in the new criminal organizations moving into Harlan County. Season two picks up with a cliffhanger after an epic gun battle.

Listen to the widget below and go download that EP! NOW!

Syntax Records is Justified by Rapzilla

Download Syntax Records is Justified

Sometimes all it takes is one song.  One song to stop you dead in your tracks.  One song that stays in your head  day after day after day. One song to lift an entire LP to greatness.  “Who Are We Fooling?” off of  Brooke Fraser’s great album Flags is such a song.  The melody is simple, quiet  and haunting, and the lyrics that engulf you. In a duet with Aqualung’s Matt Hales, Brooke and Matt takes us through the agony of a relationship gone bad.  This is a smothering relationship full of compromise and surrender.  It is a relationship neither can leave because of the marriage knot that entangles them.  It is a song about the beautiful, bruising knot that is tied at the alter. It is an entanglement that holds this couple together through heartache and confusion.

Brooke Fraser’s 2010 release Flags contains some of the best pop music released in 2010.  The eleven songs on Flags were strong enough as a group to put Flags on our Best of 2010 list.  Even without “Who Are We Fooling?”, Flags would have made it onto our best of list.  However, we believe that Brooke Fraser has created a masterpiece about the vital importance of covenant marriage to a relationship.

Who Are We Fooling by Brooke Fraser and Matt Hales (Aqualung)

So we’re back here again
Tip toeing round the edge of the end
Wondering who will be last to admit
That we’re finally over

Turned twenty one on the day that we met
Terrible shoes and plausible dress
It’s funny how sad the funny things get as you grow older

Better or worse
But what else can we do?
And better or worse
I am tethered to you
If it’s not either of us
Tell me who are we fooling?

I love the art of biting my tongue
I’m tired of trying to guess what was wrong
Both agreed on where we should go
But not how to get there

We tried and tried to loosen the knots
Thinking once we’re untangled we’ll be better off
But it’s these failures and faults that hold us together

Better or worse
But what else can we do?
And better or worse
I am tethered to you
If it’s not either of us
Tell me who are we fooling?

This beautiful tangle that’s bruising us blue
It’s a beautiful knot that we just can’t undo
Together we’re one but apart tell me
Who are we fooling?

Cause real love
Is hard love
It’s all we have
It’s a break-neck
Train wreck
It’s all we have

So we’re back here again
Turning away from the edge of the end
Arm in arm

Better or worse
But what else can we do?
And better or worse
I am tethered to you
If it’s not either of us
Tell me who are we fooling?

This beautiful tangle that’s bruising us blue
It’s a beautiful knot we just can’t undo
If it’s not either of us, tell me who are we fooling?

Together we’re one, but apart tell me
Who are we fooling?

The Invalid
Clandestine
Nightmare Records
Hard Rock
Buy NOW:
Amazon

Bombshell
Fab da Ecelectic
Independent
Hip-Pop

The Architects Of Guilt
The Famine
Solid State
Metal
Buy NOW:
Amazon

Israel Homecoming
The Gaithers
Spring House Records
Worship
Buy NOW:
Amazon

One Day Closer
Jeff Bates
Black River Music Group
Country
Buy NOW:
Amazon

Know Hope Collective
Know Hope Collective
Integrity Media
Worship

The Covering
Stryper
Big 3 Records
Metal
Buy NOW:
Amazon