MercyMe Talks 'inhale (exhale)' Album

hi everybody i'm jamie vaughn with ccn magazine and we are on this location today with mercy me hey guys how are you good you're great good so we've got a new album coming out inhale exhale um how did that name come about well uh we spent about two years making the record um gosh the first single is almost home which will be a year and a half old by the time the album releases and we had a different album title i think was called space man we were you know and then the pandemic hit and it just everything just felt like it needed to you know change and just so much time had passed and we kind of started over in the album and we kept talking about how we wanted the album to give people a chance just to take a deep breath and remember what matters and so i guess we said it enough to where the title became inhale exhale and then the cover is like a set of lungs which uh somebody's like did you plan that i was like well i mean we didn't plan we weren't necessarily thinking of covid i was thinking of inhale exhale but then when it came up we did like make sure okay this is okay right like i said yeah i'm gonna take it the wrong way but anyway it's yeah it's cool and the albums kind of become this kind of time stamp for the season that we're in and uh and so yeah we hope it brings a little bit of healing to some people yeah well i can tell you i saw the album cover and didn't even think about it okay okay okay but now i do you know i've seen through a bunch of artists that we've talked to over the past year that that this time of downtime with their families and downtime with their careers that god really has brought forth a new sound for them and a new music for them and it's it seems like it's one of those times where such a time is this it's just kind of he's placed the right words with the right artist what was your song process of picking songs writing songs it's odd all of ours are spanish now which is uh the process um man um i you know people ask like did the message change and i don't know if it changed what we've been singing about before for me writing most of the lyrics it's you know it's about letting go of your past and not letting fear consume you and so this one the not letting fear consume you absolutely applies now and so uh i think if nothing else it kind of affirmed that the message that we've been kind of preaching for years is appropriate for such a time as this and so you know we definitely the thing i think the way we intentionally probably our music changed was man in spring when the pandemic hit man i was getting all these every artist out there was doing these really emotional powerful youtube videos and sent them out it was getting heavy man it was like watching the notebook like 11 times a day and and after a while it's like man i don't know if i can take much more and so that was when we went to the label and just asked if we could release the song hurry up and wait early just to put out there just so we could make a music video that made people laugh and and that beca kind of became our motto in the album was if it doesn't rip your heart out it make them dance and and so there's a couple of like powerful songs on there but for the most part the album's definitely grooves and we'd rather you get caught at a red light dancing when nobody's looking or something like that so there that was a little intentional was to kind of lean into that more than writing 10 imagines or even ifs or whatever and so so it was a lot of fun to make it was a blast yeah and you had two special guests on the album yeah three really yeah like he was saying we were trying to make up some fun music um and and at one point we ended up coming up with a song that was very disco um and it we were a little nervous that it wouldn't feel authentic but the the further we got in the album process we really felt like man it just really fit well and we really needed to put it on and uh um as we were working through it the one of the producers we were working with was actually had worked with a disco diva uh gloria gainer um yeah yeah and so i i kind of half jokingly said man sure would be cool if we could get gloria to sing on this and he was like i bet she'd do it and barcelona for real and you actually sang on her gospel record too so you kind of knew her in and so chris texted her or emailed her or something and and she was jumped right on she was excited about it and so yeah that was that was like a career high point to have somebody with such a legacy you know be on our record but this is really really cool yeah he was awesome then we had a gary lavox elite singer rascal flatts sang on the song met him um i think after the movie maybe and he was a fan and he kept telling us he was going to sing on our album it wasn't and we're like okay and we figured it was like telling somebody naturally you're going to lunch it shouldn't happen but then but then he kept bringing it up and i started getting nervous like man what what song is gary going to sing on and so you know we didn't want to be a power ballad because he does that a lot and so this song came about it was like oh this would be perfect and it feels like it was made for him song called little love and then the third one is a song called on our way which features my oldest son sam uh it's a song he was riding with some friends for an american idol commercial or something like that trying to get it on and uh and i was like hey man you know this song is really really good and so we we kind of commissioned like let's put on the merch me record but he wasn't gonna sing on it was just gonna be me and and my voice was shot the day i was doing like a demo vocal and so i had him finish it out and uh and then the band and the label were like man this is really good we all just we got to keep them on there and so it was really cool that they they i don't know if i would ever push that on them but it was really cool they were like hey this would be awesome and so it's that's really crazy that i've been in the band long enough to we were in the band when he was born and now he's a grown man singing with a band that's awesome but yeah it turned out great so that's probably my proudest moment on the album singing with him yeah that's awesome so what is everyone's favorite song on the album [Music] say i won't still my favorite probably let yourself be loved i love the way that sounds and the lyric i think it's it's really timely like brand new right now i like brand new brand new right now yeah right brand new uh the moment is probably my favorite right now it's uh yeah just kind of the mood i mean i guess i don't we i don't listen this is about the only time i really do listen to the album a lot before it comes out just to see if there's anything i would have done differently but so that's a good question because i wouldn't know six months from now and brand new is the disco song you know i'm gonna be yeah sure yeah totally now i normally ask artists when i'm talking to them what's their favorite lyric they've ever written and what's a lyric that they wish they had of written most the time can you guess what i'm told i can only imagine really yeah a lot yes i want to know if there's a song out there that you wish that you had written it doesn't have to be a christian song it'd be anything and everything you can possibly think of wait a minute you did right there happy birthday birthday yes uh yeah white christmas skills we're not talking financial moves that yes gosh lyric jesus yeah um dang it's a tough one yesterday yesterday by the beatles would probably i'm not much of a lyricist but man that song is amazing i'm sorry go ahead stole it okay streets i'm gonna go with streets yeah i would let it be on my favorite song so probably one of those or hey jude it had to be a beatles song yeah or elo maybe yeah that or bohemian rhapsody i'd like to write that sober still don't know what those lyrics even mean but yeah we like to end our interviews with a message of hope for our viewers is there something that you'd like to tell them oh man um yeah just it's what it's just been a crazy season for everybody and and um we just hope people have a chance to if the one thing that we've learned through this pandemic well we're kind of forced to learn is just to slow down and and know what it means to find rest and literally be still and know that he's god and and so i just encourage hopefully that we can you know keep that in mind as we hopefully step back into some sense of normalcy because i'm sure it could be so easy to get back to this fast pace and as if this didn't happen and and i'm a better person for slowing down and stopping and and just uh just just dwelling in his presence more and i'm hoping that people kind of make a habit it would be awesome yeah well gentlemen thank you so thank you much wait to see everyone's reaction to the whole album it's amazing oh my gosh thanks glad you like it i'm so nervous [Laughter] nervous and i'm jamie for ccm magazine and make sure to pick up inhale exhale as soon as it comes out by mercyme

Channel: CCM Magazine

Views: 7,914

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Keywords: MercyMe, I Can Only Imagine, inhale (exhale), Christian Music, Worship, CCM, CCM Music, CCM Magazine

Id: V3_yVThqiAk

Length: 9min 0sec (540 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021