The Difference Between Repetition and Emphasis

Repetition is often treated as the easiest criticism of worship music. Sometimes it is deserved. A line can return because the writer has nowhere else to go.

But repetition can also be an arrangement of attention. The words stay still while the singer, the harmony and the room change around them. What sounded declarative on the first pass can sound necessary by the fifth.

The test is not how many times a phrase appears. It is whether the performance discovers anything while saying it again.