Released 10 years ago this coming Wednesday, this is the 18th studio album by Steven Curtis Chapman and his third album released through Provident Music. Steven Curtis Chapman has been primarily known as a Christian pop singer/songwriter from the 1980s to today, although he has taken detours into other genres such as country/bluegrass. In this release, he takes a detour into worship-focused music, music that could be used for prayer and praise at modern church services. Instead of his normal stories of life and love that point to God as the savior and creator, these are songs praising God and drawing the singer and listener closer to God. Unlike many others who jumped into the worship genre, Chapman does not cover other worship songs by others; he delivers 11 new studio tracks of worship written by himself with only a few co-writers. As far as I'm aware, none of them have been hits at churches, but I remember giving this album a first listen almost 10 years ago on a train ride and finding connection with these songs. There are a few guest singers with SCC on this album on songs they co-wrote, Matt Maher on "Hallelujah, You Are Good" and Chris Tomlin on "One True God". This album is honestly a lot better than I would expect from someone who was not known as a worship artist, though it's not his best work. Like many modern worship albums, for whatever reason there needs to be both studio and live recordings of these songs, so the CD version has 4 live recordings of the same songs as well as the studio versions, and the streaming deluxe version includes live versions of 6 songs. (I don't understand why to have both, since both the live and studio versions sound very similar.) If you want to get an introduction to Steven Curtis Chapman's music, look for his greatest hits or an older album, but this worship project is surprisingly good though I don't listen to it very often.

Release Year: 2016
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