Back when I was married to my ex, I was active in the church praise team. There was one song we sang all the time out of Bethel..."I Love Your Presence". Now, you look up information on this song, and you see the copyright is owned by Mercy and dated 1999. Here is the song in question:
Now, I often sang the bridge of this song, and every time I did, I couldn't help but think it sounded familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it...until just the other night, when THIS song recorded in 1998 came on while I was stretching:
Now, I've tried searching the web, and I can only really find one other person that even addresses this...more like saying can't the writers of praise and worship music be more creative than doing a basic copy and paste out of a secular song. But here is the problem I have...
I have songwriter friends. These people work really, really hard. There are all-night writing sessions, there is helping to produce the music when it is recorded to make sure it sounds exactly as they heard it in their head, etc. It isn't as easy a job as many people may think. I know that churches have to pay a licensing fee to have the right to include these songs in services...and LOTS of churches pay from $59/year for a congregation of 1-24 to $5,000+/year for congregations of 200K+. Who is seeing this money? In this case, Mercy (and possibly Jesus Culture), and I highly doubt that David Gray is seeing a solid cent...who wrote and recorded "Babylon" that contains, as the chorus, the bridge from "I Love Your Presence"...which is even sung in the same melody. This bothers me...again, because I have friends in the business. This is theft! Plain and simple.