After nearly three decades of writing songs about faith, hope, redemption and even penning a viral Thanksgiving ballad, Matthew West’s latest album began with the question: Who is Jesus, really? For the five-time Grammy-nominated artist, the answer became Jesus Is King,a 12-track album set to release Sept. 25.
According to the artist, the album is a declaration of faith and an examination of what it means to surrender control in a culture increasingly centered on self-determination. “I've been a Christian for a long time,” the 49-year-old Illinois native told The Christian Post. “I'm a preacher's kid. I gave my life to Christ at the age of 13.
I made a renewed commitment in my faith as a freshman in college, like once again, just kind of declaring, like I want to follow Jesus.” But decades into his faith journey, West said he increasingly realized the biblical truth that Jesus is not merely someone to believe in, but a King to whom Christians surrender their lives.
“I think I'm looking at the world around me, and I'm seeing a society that gets obsessed with self-empowerment and control,” he said. “As a follower of Christ, I think we see surrender to a king in a different light,” the singer continued. “I think a lot of times people equate acknowledging a higher authority [with] imprisonment or a loss of freedom.
But as a follower of Christ, what I've discovered is when I surrender my life to a higher authority, I find freedom, not imprisonment. I find true strength and true power, not weakness.” For Jesus Is King, West returned to the basics of Scripture to examine who, or what, was truly occupying the throne of his life. The artist shared how he storyboards each album on a dry-erase board, waiting for a song