Are Christian record labels a bad idea? PAX217 singer David Tosti thinks so
PAX217 frontman David Tosti doesn't think that Christian record labels are a good idea, he told Breathecast.
"I think the idea of labelling something Christian was just a bad idea from the start," he said. "In the world we live in now, I think if we're honest, it never really helped anybody. It didn't help the people who weren't Christian. It didn't help the people who were and trying to do it."
Tosti was lamenting the fact that Christian music often gets ridiculed. He blames what he calls "crappy bands" that label themselves as part of the Christian music industry, therefore putting Christian music in general in a bad light and negatively affecting the public's perception even of the good Christian bands.
Tosti said that people who play Christian music "have really deep wounds" and that why it hurts when other people make fun of their music.
"The only reason that I was ever made fun of was because the rest of the brand of Christian music was a joke," he shared. "There was a lot of really cool bands out there doing really cool stuff, and then there was a ton of bands out there that were really just a bunch of garbage, and you have South Park making fun of it."
But Tosti said he does not regret being part of Christian band PAX217. The Christian punk rock, reggae, and rap band was a hit during the 90s, and they broke up in 2005.
Tosti likes to think that there was never a Christian music industry to begin with, saying that this would have significantly helped good bands flourish while the rest of the "crappy" ones would have "died just like the rest of the crappy bands in the world."
He cited Switchfoot as an example, which he considers a solid Christian band who managed to gain mainstream fame simply because they are talented.