Whereas the Jesus Culture albums are a collaborative effort and we’re all in it together. For me, I felt like I needed to [record this album]. For one, as we’ve been talking about, it’s everything I’ve been through the last couple of years. I’m just really thankful for all the songs that came out of that season and it just felt like it was time to do a solo album.

All of the Jesus Culture team and everybody were so supportive, and musically I really wanted to try something that I hadn’t done before. All of our albums are obviously live, so I wanted a studio album. When I talked with our producers, I was like, “Let’s just have fun and see where it goes—if it gets too wild and crazy we can reel it back in.” I just wanted to put some melodies and music to what I have been feeling and I feel like a lot of these songs, the way they came out, are an accurate representation of the season I walked through—the joy and hope that I found through it all.

CCM: You’ve now joined the mix with others in your camp that have released studio projects—do you see Jesus Culture doing a studio album in the future?
CQ: That’s a good question. I don’t how. We’ve obviously, like you said, never done a studio album, partially because we started out as a youth group and just wanted to capture moments in worship at our conferences, etc. I think there’s obviously high value for that and we’ve always tried to even produce or arrange our songs in such a way that when we get there in a live moment, we can get off the map. Not to say that can’t happen in the studio, but there’s just something special about being in a room full of worshipers and seeing where it goes.

I don’t know. I think God can anoint a studio album as well—definitely not opposed to the idea. Practically, everybody on our label, we all love different styles of music, and everybody’s tastes are different, so to collaboratively come together as Jesus Culture and say, “Let’s try this specific style,” rarely happens. The live albums are everybody getting into a room and throwing in a bunch of ideas and trying to land the plane somewhere. All that to say, who knows? We’re always open for trying new things and exploring.

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