Kids Worship Song Review: Yancy’s Super Wonderful (The Funky Franklin Remix)
- In a culture that targets our children with every kind of sinful debauchery, it is of utmost importance that musicians, songwriters, and worship leaders serve our kids. Yancy is leading the way with creative works like this.
Celebrating 25 years in ministry, Yancy, the Dove-award-winning worship leader, and songwriter, has released Super Wonderful (The Funky Franklin Remix). The fan favorite was originally released on her 2015 album Taste and See. This new remix is by Will Franklin Chapman, drummer for Colony House. Yancy also had help from her son Sparrow, now 12 years old, who used his artistic talents to create graffiti art for the cover and the t-shirt design.
Worship Function
Yancy has a heart for writing the most excellent children’s worship tunes, with high energy, accessibility, and memorability. They are used in vacation bible schools, AWANA programs, and Sunday schools around the world. The original Super Wonderful is a favorite of many and fits in this genre perfectly. Truth be told, it’s probably played and sung along by adults in minivans and SUVs aplenty and can be used in “big church” to put a smile on everyone’s face.
I wrote this song to share about our ‘super big, super strong, super wonderful God,’ the greatest superhero of all time! – – Yancy
Music and Production
I realize they are going for the alliteration of “Funky Franklin Remix”, but the style is not funk, it’s more a kid’s dance mix ala EDM. The original 2015 version is very strong musically, but this remix does not match up to the original.
The Funky Franklin Remix starts with a children’s choir backed by stary-sounding electronic arpeggios. It moves into aggressively panned elements with a substantial beat and then into a musically restrained chorus. As it continues into the rest of the song it never really goes as big as it could. It’s an energetic remix with some good ideas that need a little more oomph from Franklin. That being said, it will still undoubtedly be a favorite.
Biblical Faithfulness
Simply Wonderful (The Funky Franklin Remix) falls best into children’s worship. The theme and content are on the money for its younger audience. The declaration of the chorus, “Super big, super strong, super wonderful God,” is easy for younger minds to grab onto. The bridge lyric, “Every day I can know God is always there for me and my family,” is an exhortation that encourages some of the fundamentals of our faith, that God is indeed big, strong, wonderful, and always there for us no matter how big or small we are.
Final Thoughts
Be careful that you don’t look down on one of these little ones. I say to you that their angels in heaven are always looking into the face of my Father who is in heaven. Mathew 18:20
The impact songs like this can have cannot be overstated. My wife went to AWANA when she was five years old and was determined to learn more about Him. At the age of seven, when her own family wanted nothing to do with church and God, she walked by herself to whatever church was nearby because she wanted to know Him. If she heard a schoolmate talking about church she would ask if their family could pick her up and take her. She would ask the pastor for the church’s Statement of Faith because she was reading the Bible and wanted to know if the church lined up with what she was reading. She did whatever it took to pursue God and his love through the darkest circumstances.
That’s the impact kid’s ministries, and songs like this, can have!
In a culture that targets our children with every kind of sinful debauchery, it is of utmost importance that musicians, songwriters, and worship leaders serve our kids. Yancy is leading the way with creative works like this.
More
Thank you Yancy for songs that instill God’s truth and fire into our kids’ hearts.
Less
Franklin’s remix needs a little more work.
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Christopher Watson is an author of six books, both fiction and non-fiction. He is also a musician and composer with a B.A. in Music from Azusa Pacific University. For several years Christopher led worship at The Springs Church while attending Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas Texas. He's been involved with worship in a number of churches in California and the Pacific Northwest both as a musician and in production and technology. Now he lives and writes in Washington State with his amazing wife, wonderful daughters, and highly intelligent dog, Ellie Mae.