Phil Wickham

 V
Location:
San Diego, California, US
Type:
Artist / Band / Musician
Genre:
Alternative / Pop / Rock
Site(s):
Label:
INO Records
Type:
Major
Phil Wickham – Heaven and Earth
I want it like it was back then, I want to be in Eden.
In some ways, the seed that eventually grew into Phil Wickham's third studio album, Heaven and Earth, was planted while reading Donald Miller's Searching For God Knows What. There is a chapter in the book that explores the idea of how all humans have a longing for the way things once were, in the beginning. A longing to be in the relationship we were created to be a part of with the Creator. Wickham's thought was this: how hard it must have been for Adam and Eve to work and struggle through life with the memory of Paradise in their hearts. The longing they had to be back face to face with their God has never left the heart of humanity.
When the first light brightened the dark,
Before the breaking of the human heart…
Wickham chooses these words to poignantly and poetically set up "Eden," the album's first track. From there the listener is invited into the story of the ethereal and the eternal. From "Eden" to the album's last track, the simple and soaring "Heaven Song."
Heaven and Earth introduces us to an artist that has not only grown in his songwriting, but who has also truly found his voice. While significant strides were made from an artistic standpoint by Wickham between his debut album and the critically acclaimed follow-up Cannons, there is a confidence in the recording that comes only with maturity and the living of life. You have never heard Wickham's voice stronger or bolder in the singing of his always artful lyrics and this is a good thing, because as he would tell you – for the first time Wickham feels that he has a story to tell. From start to finish this album, all nine months of recording, is meant as a reminder to the Church for what and who we are created for.
For the third time producer Pete Kipley (MercyMe, The Afters, Kutless) treats listeners to production that walks a constant line of allowing moments of intimacy and punches of adrenaline – often in the same song. Heaven and Earth is not only an encouraging album from a lyrical standpoint, but a delight to listen to with guitar parts that feel like they are literally plucking strings connected to your chest. Writing much of the record in the famed Abbey Road Studios certainly paid off as a story began to unfold in the songs being written for the project and for the first time Wickham found himself writing specific songs to connect the dots and join the threads that were beginning to weave themselves in and out across the tapestry that was becoming Heaven and Earth.
With a beginning and end in place, Wickham felt the need for a song to sit perfectly in the middle of the album. Not by coincidence the song, "Safe," is aimed directly at all of us who are here – in the present – in the middle of our own story between our own Genesis and Revelations – our collective Eden and Heaven. The first single on the album, "Safe" also features a duet with MercyMe's Bart Millard who just so happened to be passing through San Diego as Wickham was recording the song. While recording the chorus a few days earlier Wickham, having toured with MercyMe and being familiar with Millard's voice, couldn't help but notice a certain melody that would be served well by having the singer have his take on the lyrics. So when the band was in town playing a festival they went down to the studio the next day and some of the guys recorded guitars and bass on the song and Millard lent his voice to the recording.
The lyrics of "Safe" serve to encourage, strengthen and remind listeners that we are not alone. Sure, we have each other to lean on in tough and trying times, but more significantly we are safe in the arms of the same God that created the depths of the oceans, the far expanse of the universe and wrote his only son into the story of humanity as a living sacrifice so that we may have the relationship that was once torn by the Fall, resurrected and redeemed for eternity.
"There are so many commandments that say 'don't be anxious,' so many promises that say He will never leave us and never forsake us," Wickham conveys the importance he sees in the remembering of these truths. "When you forget God is there and you forget to look up at the sky and stars or any of His creation, you forget how massive God is and how if He can figure out how to make an eyeball work – He definitely knows how to take care of us."
"It is good that you be reminded of these things," Wickham continues. "That is so much of what a Christian artist, even more so a worship leader is supposed to do for the Church. If we are Christians, we know God is great and we know what Jesus did on the cross. We know all the stories, but to be reminded of and to be compelled to move by those stories, I feel, is in a way a large part of what my goal in music is - to remind the Church of the reality of the Gospel, the importance of the cross, of the excitement and hope that we have in Heaven."
On the last track, "Heaven Song," Wickham quietly makes a promise and a confession.
You wrote a letter and You signed your name,
I read every word of it page by page.
You said You'd be coming, coming for me soon.
Oh my God, I'll be ready for You.
I want to run on greener pastures, I want to dance on higher hills…
…my soul is getting restless for the place where I belong.
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