OMG, the new songbook, dreadful!! Absolutely dreadful, the worst!!!
I think the old songbook was called, "Sing Praises to Jehovah", the new songbook should be called, "Sing Praises to the Governing Body"!!!
And don't even get me started about the music, they all sound like funeral dirges, only not even that elegant or pretty. The music sounds all wrong, the words are forced to fit the music, no logical or beautiful rhythm to it, just terrible and awkward.
And the melody, if you want to call it that, doesn't fit expectations of how you would sing a song. Where you would expect the music to lift and sound elevated, it dips low, it's like the music is constantly sinking.... and the songs are filled with weird chord progressions (though they always have been, even in the old brown songbook) whch makes them difficult to play and sing along with.
The songs sound sad, depressing, and all the same. And the congregation sings them that way, too. One of my last acts of defiance before I stopped going to meetings was to belt those crappy songs out as loud as I could, haha. It was cool to sing "angry" but I didn't care in the least. I caught a few looks of surprise, but nobody said anything to me. They probably didn't know what to make of somebody practically screaming their stupid songs at them. Ha!