To embrace the future, we must first discover the past. Although Contemporary Christian Music as we know it is still on the rise, the Christian music industry has a deep and rich decades-long history. Whether you listened to Petra as a child or grew up on Chris Tomlin, Christian music has birthed many memorable artists and bands. Every week, we want to take you on a trip down memory lane as we reminisce about some of the most influential albums to have ever touched our ears.

WHEN OLD BECOMES NEW
When I was perusing the archives this week for this week's article, I noticed yet another pattern among the releases. For this week's installment, I wanted to focus on the many exciting, impressive and just plain interesting re-releases that call the second week of August their home.

I first noticed the trend in 2012 when American Idol Season 5 alum Mandisa released her first remix EP Get Movin', a collection of five toe-tapping tracks spanning Mandisa's first three albums. Although the initial assortment of songs was short, these remixes did a fine job capitalizing on the recent success of her latest radio hit, the TobyMac-referencing "Good Morning", breathing new life into the collection and ultimately finding a place on the full-length remix album Get Up: The Remixes two years later.

The trend of reimagined albums became even more evident the further I dived into the archives.  Over the past several years deluxe and special editions of critically-acclaimed albums have become commonplace, but I was still taken aback by how many deluxe albums were released in early August in the past fifteen years alone. The most notable one is also the most recent.

In 2012, singer-songwriter Matthew West took the tremendously popular fan-inspired formula from his previous record The Story of Your Life and revisited the concept once again with Into The Light, an album that would find West nominated for a Grammy Award. Because the album was so popular, the label decided to re-release the album a year later on August 13th under the guise of Into the Light: Life Stories & Live Songs. This version included all the songs on the original release, but packaged them up nicely into a two-disc set which featured a 60-minute DVD filled with a live concert and stories that helped inspire the album. If you're a hardcore Matthew West fan or a die-hard completionist, Into the Light: Life Stories & Live Songs is something you'll want to add to your collection.

If we go back several more years, we'll find even more examples of deluxe albums released this week. Indiana-based rockers Kids In The Way had a short but celebrated career in the mid and early 2000s, and in 2006 the band re-released their second major label effort Apparitions of Melody as Apparitions of Melody: Dead Letters Edition. Like Matthew West's Into The Light, this re-envisioning quickly became known as the definitive version of the album, featuring three music videos from the band and two brand-new tracks recorded specifically for the re-release: "Fiction" and "Getting Over You Getting Over Me."
 
OTHER NOTABLE RELEASES
If you were a 90's kid, chances are you had at least one Jump5 album in your portable CD player. The pop fivesome inspired countless young teenagers (including myself) to dance and belt out the group's shameless bubblegum pop melodies. If you really want to feel old, just take look at the calendar: Jump 5's self-titled debut released exactly 15 years ago this week. Realizing their smooth blend of teen pop struck a sweet spot with audiences, the group released their second album All The Time in the World exactly one year later on August 13, 2002. So go ahead, dust off those CD players and see if you can you remember all the lyrics and choreography to "Spinnin' Round" and "All The Time In The World."

In 2006, pop princess Stacie Orrico released her final album Beautiful Awakening internationally on August 14. The Japanese version of the album included two exclusive extra tracks--"Frustrated" and "Brush 'Em Off"--that were not on the American release several months later. 

2009 was an impressive year with several top-tier releases. Showbread, who we touched on last week, put out their last album on Tooth & Nail records with The Fear of God. Britt Nicole's sophomore album The Lost Get Found helped launch the singer into the spotlight, filling the pop void left after Orrico's departure from the music industry three years prior. Finally, St. Louis-based rapper Travis "Thi'sl" Tyler released his major label debut Chronicles of an X-Hustler to critical acclaim.
 
Take a walk down musical memory lane with the playlist below.