“Jesus is my boyfriend” songs
LOL! That's what our music director calls them!
Quick, the antidote:
O Sing Joyfully (Batten)
See you, and raise.
(Ah, internet ephemera. I once found a wealth of beautiful acapella congregational psalm singing from various (mostly) Free Church of Scotland websites, not a one of which I can find now. Got 'em saved here, but wish I had something to link to.)
Our local variant is the Sacred Harp Singing
I've been singing OSH for years and years, my first sing was back in the 1980s at Lacey's Chapel in Henager AL.
The film that this trailer was made from actually features some of the singers at Lacey's Chapel. I saw the film at the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Macon GA . . . they had a room set up just like a hymn sing, with the benches in a hollow square and everything.
Like they say on the trailer . . . just a wall of sound. Eat your heart out, Phil Spector!
Ignore the silly costumes. The tune was composed in the 1930s by one of the Cagles, who pretty single-handedly saved Sacred Harp singing. It was devised strictly according to the rules, though, and it's typical of the tradition.
One interesting thing about OSH is that each part can stand alone as a melody, it's one of the rules. Another is that the treble and tenor are doubled in octave (alto, if present, and bass are not). The really old tunes are 3 part, but most are 4. And the 'fuging' part at the end of each verse is pretty much a tradition too. It ought to go a LOT faster (at least that's the way we sing it in the South).