I was a bit late to the party on this one, but there was a post last week on the Sola Panel about changing song words.

 

I could start a long and angry rant here about the presumption of changing someone else's lyrics, but won't because it's too late at night.

But here are a few points:

• lyrics are carefully chosen. The lyricist is probably a better writer than you are, so leave them as they are.
  
• lyrics say what the lyricist wanted them to say. If you don't like it, chose another song.
• lyrics belong to the lyricist. Even if you have bought a copy of the song it is still not yours. Don't mess with it.
• lyrics are copyright. You are breaking the law if you change them.

You wouldn't try to change the colour of my baby's eyes, would you? Don't change the words of my songs.

There is an argument that always seems to pop up that says that songwriters should give their songs to the church for free and that there should be no royalties of any sort. Such an argument is stupid. Here are a few facts.

• If you want to make money, go work at Woolworths. It pays much better than songwriting. We don't do it for the money.
  
• Organisations that don't collect royalties generally don't have their songs sung. The sad truth is that it costs money to get songs out there. If evangelical songs are not properly marketed, charo songs will get more and more of a market share and the church will not be served well. We would not be doing the church any favours by not selling our songs.
  
• By rights, we should get paid a whole lot more than we do. If we were secular songwriters we would get money everytime our songs were performed - each week in church. We (willingly) get none of that. The CCLI system where churches only pay to print off the words and music is very generous to churches.
  

I could go on, but won't.