【Pls look at the top comment first】Petra is regarded as a pioneer of Christian rock and contemporary Christian music genres. The name "Petra" was taken from the Greek word for "rock". Like many other bands formed in the 1970s, Petra's musical genre started as old-school rock, but grew impressive by hard/melodic rock. With a style initially similar to The Eagles and Lynyrd Skynyrd, Petra's sound evolved into a more energetic, driving rock sound in the early 1980s akin to Foreigner, Styx and Journey as the glorious 1980s days achieved a great deal of rock legends.

Throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, Petra was one of the world's most popular Christian rock bands. Until today, their great hits never fade away. So This album means a lot to Petra and this song means a lot to human's lifetime and values as a member of this world. For Christians, life is a gift that God can give. CCM artists sing for people and life, bless people and raise people's awareness of the world. Every impressive CCM masterpiece can hit people in the hearts and win people's minds, that is what Petra's music can bring.

"Unseen Power" was a hit, allowing Petra to top 6 million records sold since its inception – the most of any Christian artist at the time, and opened No. 1 on Billboard's Christian music charts in November 1991 and stayed in the top 10 for seven months. The album was produced by John & Dino Elefante, the world-famous Christian musicians and released by Dayspring, Word and Epic records. The former two labels focused on CCM distribution. In this album, guitarist Bob Hartman wrote most of the songs with John Elefante, Timothy Wright and his bandmate keyboardist, John Lawry. This song "Hey World" is written by Bob Hartman both in lyrics and music, a song coveying the contents about a young woman's abortion and the hopelessness and the fragile life that a young man confronts. The theme of this song is based on facing one's worth in lifetime, which is the spirit from God's giving as well as the core value in many contemporary Christian musical works.

It is no exaggeration to say that this album includes all the amazing works, perfectly combined hard rock with aor. They do hard rock in "Unseen Power" by the songs like "Destiny", "Who's On The Lord's Side", "Dance", "Secret Weapon" and "Sight Unseen" while the rest aor tunes all bless for ears. Musically, "Unseen Power" shows a kind of comparatively steady style with an equal mix of keyboards and guitars. Five singles "Destiny", "Dance", "I Need To Hear From You", "Signt Unseen" and "In The Likeness Of You" were all filmed into music videos.

It is worth mentioning that once a newly formed Hard Rock Cafe asked Petra for materials to include in its restaurant displays, the first for a Christian band. Radio single "Hand On My Heart" was among the top 20 songs on Christian AC radio in 1992 and it was also one of five tracks from the album to hit No. 1 on the Christian radio charts.

Most importantly, "Unseen Power" garnered Petra the second Grammy, again winning for Best Rock/Contemporary Gospel Album in 1992 while their first Grammy Award was from their album "Beyond Belief (1990)", winning for Best Rock/Contemporary Gospel Album in 1990. "Unseen Power" also brought Petra the big achievement on a Dove Award, for Rock Recorded Song of the Year in 1992.

Petra has won four Grammy Awards, ten Dove Awards and The Netherlands' Contemporary Christian album of the year – This Means War! (1988), was nominated nine times on Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Hard Rock Cafe (1994), the Gospel Music Hall of Fame (2000) and the Christian Music Hall of Fame (2007).

Many prominent Christian artists, who started their careers in CCM, know the essence of CCM and have been dedicated to CCM by listening to Petra, and many artists have recorded tributes to Petra, the most respected name for contemporary Christian music.
#MelodicRock #aor #Petra #CCM

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