Since his first solo project in 1983, Smith has become one of the most popular artists in the contemporary Christian music world, while also finding considerable success in the mainstream. Smith has frequently topped both Christian radio and Billboard charts and is often listed as one of the top keyboardists in rock and roll in Keyboard Magazine. Smith has sold more than 13 million records and has had 29 #1 hit songs. By 2005, he had garnered 14 gold records and 5 platinum records, 40 Dove Awards, an American Music Award and 3 Grammy Awards. He was also named one of People magazine's most beautiful people.
The Glory Songfacts reports that recorded with a 65-piece London orchestra, Glory is Christian musician Michael W. Smith’s seventeenth studio album and his second instrumental record. It was released November 22, 2011. His first instrumental album was Freedom, which was released November 21, 2000.
02_Wired For Sound
Michael W. Smith Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
There is no need for proof
In a world that's wired for sound
The tongue becomes the mighty sword
That battles the truth
In a world that's wired for sound
Coming on like a tidal wave
No dispute when the noise is made
And so it lets the blind lead the blind
Lured by charisma to be swayed to believe
Word of mouth is the counselor
There is no need for proof
In a world that's wired for sound
The tongue becomes the mighty sword
That battles the truth
In a world that's wired for sound
Easier believing what is hard to get rid of than to try
Never searching just accepting
Feeds the mind enough to get you by
Scratching the surface yet to dig deeper down
Word of mouth is the counselor
There is no need for proof
In a world that's wired for sound
The tongue becomes the mighty sword
That battles the truth
In a world that's wired for sound
Wisdom from the sacred page
Is turned and ignored
In a world that's wired for sound
The lyrics of Michael W. Smith's song "Wired For Sound" highlight how in the modern digital age, hearsay and superficial beliefs have become more trusted and convincing than factual and researched knowledge. The lyrics talk about how the "word of mouth" is now the counselor, and given how the world is now "wired for sound," people tend to believe in the first thing they hear rather than spend time searching for the truth. The tongue has become a mighty sword that can battle with the truth, and people now follow blindly those who are charismatic and very convincing, rather than judging truth by facts.
The lyrics go on to talk about how it is easier to accept things that can cause more harm rather than digging deeper down and trying to find the truth. The superficial belief and hearsay practice feeds the minds enough to get people by and encourages a blind-leading-the-blind type of mentality. The lyrics conclude with a statement about how the sacred pages of wisdom are being ignored in a world where hearsay and superficial beliefs have taken over.
In summary, the song is very thought-provoking, and the lyrics are very relevant in today's society, where social media tends to spread news and rumors faster and more efficiently than any other platform.
Line by Line Meaning
Word of mouth is the counselor
The opinions of others are heavily relied upon for guidance
There is no need for proof
People are willing to accept information without evidence or validation
In a world that's wired for sound
In a society where communication is instant and constant
The tongue becomes the mighty sword
Words have immense power to both influence and wound others
That battles the truth
People use their words to contest or deny what is factual
Coming on like a tidal wave
Information arrives rapidly and forcefully
That washes through the brain-a state of mind
The overwhelming nature of information can lead people to a state where they are easily swayed
No dispute when the noise is made
People do not question information that is presented in a certain way
And so it lets the blind lead the blind
People who are uninformed are often the ones setting trends or guiding others
Lured by charisma to be swayed to believe
People are easily convinced when someone presents themselves in a persuasive or appealing manner
Easier believing what is hard to get rid of than to try
It is simpler for people to accept something false and avoid the challenge of questioning it
Never searching just accepting
People do not seek out answers or do their own research before adopting an idea
Feeds the mind enough to get you by
People are content with an incomplete or inaccurate understanding of a subject
Scratching the surface yet to dig deeper down
People only have a superficial understanding of the information they have accepted
Wisdom from the sacred page
Advice or guidance from respected sources
Is turned and ignored
People choose to dismiss valuable insights in favor of more enticing or agreeable ideas
In a world that's wired for sound
All of these issues are amplified and intensified by the constant influx of communication available in modern society
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: MICHAEL W. SMITH, WAYNE KIRKPATRICK
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@RwBguardian
Word of mouth is the counselor
There is no need for proof
In a world that's wired for sound
The tongue becomes the mighty sword
That battles the truth
In a world that's wired for sound
Coming on like a tidal wave
That washes through the brain-a state of mind
No dispute when the noise is made
And so it lets the blind lead the blind
Lured by charisma to be swayed to believe
Word of mouth is the counselor
There is no need for proof
In a world that's wired for sound
The tongue becomes the mighty sword
That battles the truth
In a world that's wired for sound
Easier believing what is hard to get rid of than to try
Never searching-just accepting
Feeds the mind enough to get you by
Scratching the surface yet to dig deeper down
Word of mouth is the counselor
There is no need for proof
In a world that's wired for sound
The tongue becomes the mighty sword
That battles the truth
In a world that's wired for sound
Wisdom from the sacred page
Is turned and ignored
In a world that's wired for sound
@notatall8722
Huh. What makes you say that?
If anything, the antithesis of MWS's beliefs (construed roundly) is what is unthinkingly accepted by most persons in the postmodern West. All the cultural propaganda of the last fifty years, occupying all the high ground of entertainment and education, makes for a very strong current, difficult to swim against.
If you want to find someone who isn't scratching the surface but is "digging deeper down" in the modern era, you pretty much have to find yourself someone who approaches "wisdom from the sacred page" with virtues that rarely seem to coincide: intellectual voracity and intellectual humility.
The book "Called to Love" by Anderson and Granados, or the philosophy of Aquinas as described by guys like David Oderberg and Edward Feser, exist to show us what "digging deeper down" looks like. I would include Lewis' "The Discarded Image" and "The Abolition of Man," too.
But these days, the presumptuous and proud "thin-telligence" of the modern "trousered ape" is far more common.
@notatall8722
A very fair reply, and I thank you for it.
It's interesting you describe "wisdom from the sacred page" as something which doesn't "completely fit the times we are living in." I happen to both agree and disagree, drawing a distinction between that which changes and that which doesn't.
If information falls under the category of eternal truth, then it's not a question of whether that truth "fits our times," but of whether "our times" make it easy (or tough) for us to fit that truth. If a truth won't change, we'd better adapt to it. If God exists with XYZ characteristics, we'd better know about it. And if, as Christians say, XYZ includes Him desiring our long-term happiness and understanding us better than we understand ourselves, then "blessedness" (what the Greeks called "eudaimonia" = "great-souledness") can be best achieved by following His recommendations for human behavior.
On the other hand, societies change around us. The apostle Paul wrote an instruction for Christian women in a certain Greek city to avoid wearing certain kinds of braided hair -- because, I am told, it was associated with pagan temple prostitutes and he didn't want them giving the "wrong impression." Now if someone argued TODAY that "obeying the Bible" meant African-American women are forbidden to have "cornrows," I could only reply, "I think you've misunderstood Paul's point." THAT dictum, taken as unchanging and un-contextual, would not "fit our times." (But taking it that way would also be a disservice to the author's intent.)
I find this sentence confusing: "But I believe you have to go with facts and what you feel is right. Faith is believing in something that you can't see or touch." Obviously I agree about facts. But did you mean to say "feel" in "what you feel is right?" Or did you mean "think" or "conclude?" (Sorry if that's rudely persnickety. I'm about as allergic to post-modernist relativism/sentimentalism about truth claims as a man can be.)
Re: Faith: The odd thing about Christians' original use of that word, is it's so different from the modern use. Of course many modern Christians don't know this and unthinkingly absorb the modern usage from their culture. They end up talking as if Christianity bids a man to believe something on insufficient evidence and then to consider doing so virtuous! This isn't 180 degrees wrong, but it's close.
I prefer the understanding given in C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity," which is also found in "Fides et Ratio" (Pope John Paul II). (Oddly I think most atheists would, too!)
The idea is:
1. By thinking carefully, one can "see," as a matter of natural reason, that God exists and must, as the primary cause of all things, have the attributes (perfect goodness, omniscience, being "outside time," etc.) described in classic Judeo-Christian theism.
2. By a similar process, one can confidently eliminate most claims to special revelation, but adopt others as at least plausible.
3. Provided one does not adopt faulty starting-assumptions (e.g. reductive materialism), one finds Jesus' claims likely.
4. At some point, though, this ceases being idle speculation: You have to do something about it.
5. At that point a temptation arises: A desire to avoid "complications" and "being drawn in" and "God interfering with how my life is going." And THAT is where (traditional) Christianity says that "faith" comes in. "Faith," in this old sense, is "obstinate stick-to-it-iveness": Refusal to deny what you've come to think is true (through a rational process), even when your emotions and circumstances make you wish you could ignore it.
I like that view, because it isn't relativist or sentimentalist. But it also acknowledges that "humans aren't Vulcans." It says that when we start arriving at conclusions (about God, or unjust war, or the environment, or whatever) which imply moral obligations, we humans usually prefer to change the subject! But "faith" is a matter of having the guts to see the thing through: To be persuaded even of uncomfortable truths if they really seem true, and to act in accord with them.
But I realize these days the other usage is far more common. What a pity!
Anyhow, thanks for your earlier reply.
@notatall8722
I understand. ("Jello" or not, what you're saying seems perfectly coherent to me.)
I certainly agree that the 73 (or, after the 1600's, and only for Protestants, the 66) books which make up the Christian "Bible" were written by men. And they were also selected for inclusion in a single collection by men (the Christian "episkopoi," or "bishops," of the 4th century: Athanasius, Damasus, etc.).
As I'm sure you know, Christians argue that God offered a sort of mysterious guidance to those authors and the selectors, enabling otherwise-unimpressive writings (by otherwise unimpressive men, in many cases) to rise unexpectedly to great wisdom. And of course many persons, by reading those texts in a particular way (they call it "lectio divina"), come to "know Jesus" through them.
But I wonder if your upbringing -- from your words I am guessing it was American and "Bible based" in the Protestant fashion -- hasn't rather spoiled that approach for you? At least a little?
Here is what I mean: There is a type of person who derives comfort from "lists laid out fair and square," and I think we need that kind (and all the other kinds) in our world. There is a kind of humility and practicality in "thinking plain."
But much of the Bible was written by and for a very different sort of man. It is thus easily misunderstood, and easily mis-read in a way that does violence to the authors' intent. (How many people miss the sarcastic humor! And how many people have gone awry by mistaking the literary genre of the early chapters of the Book of Genesis! They should be read more like the lyrics of American Pie or a Bob Dylan song, than like a news report. That is why Genesis 1 is laid out in multiple layers of "parallelism," which is a kind of poetry in that culture.)
Now the best way to approach deep writings is from inside a common frame-of-reference with the author. For example, if we share the same culture and language and historical era, understanding will come naturally. But we don't! ...and so a lot of explanation is probably required. (It's like being a teenager reading Shakespeare for the first time, except you have to read it in translation, so that even the rhythm of the original language is lost.)
There is another "common frame-of-reference" which is even better: If a man "knows" God, and the author of the text also "knew" God, then their mutual experiences of God will share the same "flavor" -- they will recognize the personality of God in one another's experiences of Him. But if one doesn't yet have that, and if one also is a 21st-century postmodern westerner trying to see life through the eyes of a 6th-century B.C. ancient near easterner, then whew! What a gulf to cross! (And if one has negative childhood experiences producing further sour associations, then that makes it even harder, especially when related to father-figures or spiritual authority-figures.)
I agree with you that everything made requires a maker. (And since logic prevents an infinite regression of making, a First Maker is logically implied.) Likewise, if change exists in the universe (wherein anything being changed is changed by something outside itself producing the change) then the fact that we see change implies some Primary Source of change.
Moreover, everything we see is an Effect produced by some Cause, either occurring in sequence or simultaneously-and-continuously. But logic prohibits an infinite regression of Causes which are themselves only the Effects of other things continually Causing them. Such a chain, working backwards, must terminate in a Primary Cause which isn't caused by anything else, but just Is.
You probably already know that you aren't the first to think along these lines. Plato and Aristotle independently arrived at something like the Judeo-Christian idea of God, by starting from arguments like these, and then reasoning out what the attributes of a "First Cause" or "First Changer" or "First Maker" would logically be. (If you've never read "Aquinas - A Beginner's Guide" by Ed Feser, I highly recommend it. It fleshes out where Aristotle left off, and how Aquinas picked up the baton and ran still further.)
I appreciate especially two things you said:
1. "My faith now is, be a good person, always do what is right, and never try to hurt another human being." This is of course laudable and too many people -- sometimes I can fall in this category, I fear -- are far too slack about it.
My only caveat is this: We humans are often not very wise. When two persons disagree about "what is right," logically at least one of them is wrong. (Perhaps both are!) Such disagreements happen all the time. This means that an awful lot of humans insisting that "X is right and Y is wrong" are, in fact, sincere but mistaken. And -- if we are humble or realistic about our own limitations -- it follows that you and I often make that error, too. But -- as you correctly stated -- we ought to "always do what is right." How then, can we become wiser about right and wrong, so as to not blunder about causing more harm than good?
This, to me, is the big hitch in trying to "always do what is right." We can't give up trying -- I agree with you about that! -- but if we're realistic about ourselves, we know how apt we are to get it wrong. If anything illustrates "man's need for God," it is this recognition of how easily we can confuse right and wrong.
2. Re: Christianity (or perhaps just Bible Literalism?) you say: "There is too much I don't agree with and I 'feel' that picking and choosing is the wrong way to go about it so I won't."
Does it seem strange that, when I read that sentence, I kind of felt like "praising God?" I mean: I really appreciate the honesty of it.
Yes, by all means: If it's a choice between insincere participation and sincere abstention, choose the latter. Picking and choosing is something you can do at the salad bar at a cafeteria! But if it is true that God Has Spoken and that His collected messages have been assembled into a religious tradition that's still alive in the world, then it wouldn't be right to "pick and choose" from that!
Sorry for the long response.
I hope whatever pain you're in is better now, and that the meds aren't making you feel immersed in jello any more!
@61pwcc
30 years later and for some reason, this song STILL gets my emotions stirred up...
@danstevens487
because its epic
@PumpUptheJam81
I’m now 41 but LOVED this song when I was a kid. So epic. Life moves fast.
@enoquesant2000
Música maravilhosa! (Awesome song!)
@temistoclesramos6658
Só música Boa meu Deus.
@RwBguardian
Word of mouth is the counselor
There is no need for proof
In a world that's wired for sound
The tongue becomes the mighty sword
That battles the truth
In a world that's wired for sound
Coming on like a tidal wave
That washes through the brain-a state of mind
No dispute when the noise is made
And so it lets the blind lead the blind
Lured by charisma to be swayed to believe
Word of mouth is the counselor
There is no need for proof
In a world that's wired for sound
The tongue becomes the mighty sword
That battles the truth
In a world that's wired for sound
Easier believing what is hard to get rid of than to try
Never searching-just accepting
Feeds the mind enough to get you by
Scratching the surface yet to dig deeper down
Word of mouth is the counselor
There is no need for proof
In a world that's wired for sound
The tongue becomes the mighty sword
That battles the truth
In a world that's wired for sound
Wisdom from the sacred page
Is turned and ignored
In a world that's wired for sound
@jonathanfischer9737
Re Sisk thank you! God bless
@Cordolx100
Fã demais!
@mikeinsf
AWESOME lyrics!
@BeliceA7X
Love love this song!!!