Classic Album: Newsboys - Take Me to Your Leader

There are records that lose their sex appeal over time. We look at and judge bands based on their whole discography or the scene and time in which they really flourished. The Newsboys were a growing band and Step Up To The Microphone put the band over the top and shot them to CCM Super Stardom.

Take Me to Your Leader was an in between record for the Newsboys. Not Ashamed and Going Public are weird early 90's records that at moments remind of a bad version of Fine Young Cannibals (a band I do love). There are great moments on both of those records but neither record is what I would call stellar. But Take Me to Your Leader is a shift. It's the band's lone real alternative record.

God Is Not A Secret blows the doors off any song the Newsboy had or would ever do in their career. A straight up head banging rock song. Breathe, Cup Of Tea, Miracle Child, and Lost the Plot are reflect that mid-90's alternative rock scene perfectly. It's All Who You Know is more of a quirky track and might have been a prequel to the disco phase that would come later but it's a stellar track. Even the ballad, Let It Go, is a wonderful song.

Of course the songs that made this record such a hit, Breakfast and Reality, don't showcase the band's alternative side and because those are the songs that are taken from this record as the band's best of, have probably painted Take Me to Your Leader as another CCM record you're trying to forget you ever owned.

Maybe pull this record up in iTunes and give it another spin. Most of this album holds up really nicely.