A look over Billboard magazine’s glowing Third Day cover story has us all scratching our scalps with a bothersome sense of deja vu (much like the “hmmm” that occurred when we saw their new cover art). See if these narrative highlights don’t sound a bit familiar:

• Band brings in prestigious producer to “really shake things up.”
• Band’s studio sessions produce feelings of inadequacy and spark musical growth.
• Band’s corporate backers really look forward to the new record’s drop.
• Radio already eating up band’s first single.
• Millions of loyal fans will worship new album anyway. No pun intended.

Yeah, thought so. Maybe it isn’t Third Day’s fault that their pre-release story sounds exactly like * ahem *. Maybe it’s just those lazy music journalists who can’t come up with a better way to frame these things. Oh well. What really matters is that this album is coming July 29th, that it features Daughtry and that Flyleaf girl, and that it’s going to be amazing. Just like “Cry Out to Jesus.”

Anyway, in between all of Billboard‘s ga-gaing about charts and sales (we forgive them), we find this interesting tidbit about the commercial benefits of Christianity:

[Red Light Management’s Bruce Flohr] says he’s enjoyed educating corporate America on the benefits of sponsoring Christian acts. “One thing that’s so wonderful about the Christian marketplace is the loyalty of the fans,” Flohr says. “It’s really a great conversation to have with corporate America when you say, ‘If you support this, you will reap the benefits because their fans are so loyal.’ A lot of times corporate America spends money with artists and they never really know if they got their value. With Third Day you can say, ‘Look what happened at GMC when they spent money on a tour. Look at the e-mails fans sent in where they said, “Thank you for supporting our band.” ’ ”

Optimistic interpretation: Christians are loyal to their brethren in the music industry. Cynical interpretation: Christians are easy to make money off of ‘cause they’ll buy anything with a cross on it (or perhaps anything that sounds like a cross).

But by far the best moment of the two-page spread is this little passage:

Flohr bemoaned that he couldn’t get a beer sponsorship for Third Day’s upcoming tour, telling the crowd that they were used to “selling a shhh . . . er, uh, boatload of beer” at mainstream rock shows. Attendees laughed at the gaffe.

Just curious: how un-Christian a band do you have to be to have alcohol sold at your shows? I’ve been to alcohol-drenched Anberlin and Mae shows (at which it was amusingly obvious which half of the crowd was the church groups). But what about Jars of Clay? The David Crowder Band club tour? The Myriad? Any little birds out there that want to report?

Also, it’ll be fun to see if Casting Crowns can arrange to have alcohol banned for their headlining performance at the North Dakota State Fair. At least make sure the reporters have some … believe me, it’ll pay in the reviews.