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Living Hope: An Interview With Phil Wickham

Posted on Sep 25, 2018 posted by Jeremy | Artists, Interviews 00

Phil Wickham is a longtime friend of Worship Leader magazine. In the wake of Phil’s newly released single, “Living Hope”, and the pending August 3rd full album release of the same title, Worship Leader magazine’s Alex MacDougall caught up with Phil. The album, Living Hope, is filled with such a fine mix of tempos, musical diversity, and lyrical imagery, and through all of it, worship is at its core. With 15 songs, Phil ranges from intimate solo and small ensemble accompaniment to full band production. For more information, visit
philwickham.com.

Worship Leader (WL): “Living Hope” is your new single. It has a hymn-like quality to it, and for the church, is anthemic in impact. What can you tell us about that song? What inspiration was behind the writing of this tune, along with your collaboration with Brian Johnson?

Phil Wickham: I got a text from Brian Johnson, of a short voice memo of him humming into his phone and strumming his guitar a little bit, saying, “Hey, Phil, I’ve got this idea, and it’s just a melody”. And he started humming it, and there are just a few lines in there that just kind of reminded me of a hymn. I replied, “what if this was the verse and we just made this song really verse heavy like a hymn and just had a refrain”, and he loved that idea. We didn’t know what we were going to call it. At first, it was going to be called, “Heart Deep”, like, your love goes heart deep. As we were writing this song, these lyrics about, this unfathomable, uncrossable chasm between our unholiness and God’s holiness, and how Jesus bridged that gap, burst into our darkness. Then the next verse asked the question, “How did he do it”? He did it with the cross, the empty grave, and now he calls me because of what he did.

Credit: https://worshipleader.com/articles/living-hope-an-interview-with-phil-wickham/

Sep '18