It was 1998. For a brief moment, the swing jazz music of many decades before came back into fashion. And if you wanted swing music made by Christians, The W's was the band for you. Released 27 years ago yesterday, this is their first album and includes 11 whimsical and fun songs. Their musicianship and songwriting is pretty good, though to be honest, I haven't listened to this enough over the years for the lyrics to be at all memorable. Well, the one exception to that was their big single, the very cheesy song "The Devil Is Bad". It, quite predictably, tells the story of Eve and the snake in the Garden of Eden, with the chorus exclaiming "You are the devil and you are bad!" A few other songs tell Biblical stories, but others like "Alarm Clock" and "King of Polyester" seem to be just fun swing grooves with lyrics about life and love. Is it the best swing album? No, probably not. But it was a kinda big deal among the Christian rock crowd back in the day. It was also kinda legendary because, until earlier this year, it wasn't on any streaming services. Now it's on there in a compilation of their whole discography, so the first 11 tracks is this album.

Release Year: 1998
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