The singer and songwriter Naomi Raine examines her faith, identity, motherhood, and mental health in a new solo album, “Journey: The Acoustic Sessions,” released on Oct. 5. She’s also a member of the worship music collective Maverick City Music and between her own work and theirs, has earned several Grammy, Billboard and Dove Music Awards, as well as the admiration of the Christian music community. “Journey: Acoustic Sessions” is a follow-up to Raine’s full “Journey” album released in July.
She joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom to talk about her life in music and the themes that inspired her latest recording.
Interview highlights:
Deep personal revelations expressed in the songs of “Journey”:
“‘Pending Emotions’ and ‘Paper Plates’ [are] really about my discovery of the fact that I was emotionally constipated. That’s what I call it,” Raine laughed. “I was overly regulating my emotions. I was stifling and avoiding conflict and avoiding anything that looked like it would make me emotional. And so because of that, I realized that I had opted for a life of convenience and not wanting to deal with people and relationships that were super important. I would rather just run out and get a new friend instead of working on an old friendship.”
She continued, “We get to ‘Hold On,’ which is a song about my marriage and relationship, and it’s saying, ‘Hey, even though like there’s not a lot of ‘definites’ here, we don’t know how things are going to go in life, but we know we’re going to hold on to one another.’ And it goes into ‘Good Story,’ and ‘Good Story’ is about really leaning into the fact that every couple, every relationship has a story… It’s not just like, ‘Yay, they were happy they got together, and they laughed, the end.’ That’s not how it goes. There’s always some point of conflict or some problem that arises that has to be solved, and ‘Good Story’ is basically saying, ‘Let’s tell our story,’ and we know we (are) overcome by the blood of the lamb, but also the word of our testimony, and so there’s strength and power in telling the story. And ‘Brand New’ is that exhale. It’s just the deep breath at the end of the project, and it’s like, ‘Oh, I actually went through the journey. I made it, I survived, and I’m okay.”
On the album’s several “Car Chat” interludes:
“I was listening to the mixes, and there were questions that were popping up in my mind. Like, I was thinking, ‘I wonder what people would ask me about this song.’ And so I remember just saying, ‘I’m going to record what I would want to say,’ because… people know me as a worship leader, mostly, and this type of music, I think, was a little different,” said Raine. “I wanted to just kind of talk like I would talk in the car with my friends, and most of my prayer time I have in the car. Of course, I pray at home when I’m in the bed in the morning, but also, I go in my car to pray, and so I spend a lot of my time in the car talking to the Lord.”
“What you hear is me just literally pressing record in my car, and driving, and I just try to keep it as real and authentic as I possibly could,” Raine said. “I didn’t try to plan it out at all – just kind of gave the truth.”
How Maverick City Music aims to move the Christian music community forward:
“There’s a very social and compassionate and loving aspect to preaching the gospel, not just spiritual. And so for us, doing these songs and making this music, we understand that there’s gonna be industry, right? But industry is about streamlining process and also making money, and our country has been built on making money as a capitalistic country.” Raine added, “Racism is a part of this, our capitalistic culture, and so because of that, there are spiritual and social norms that… leech into every industry in our nation, and we have to fight hard to continue to eradicate it, and remove it.”
“When our founder Tony [Brown]… was writing, he wrote this song, ‘Good, Good Father.’ He’s a songwriter in the industry, and he was getting a lot of opportunities to write with people, and he looked at the writers in our genre. And out of the top 10 writers in our genre, maybe two of them were female, and none of them were Black. None of them were Hispanic, none of them were Asian. It was really white men, and that was the face of the people that were writing the music for the whole body of Christ. That looks much different than just white men. And so I will tell you this, I love my brothers, my white brothers. I love white men, and I don’t think we need to get rid of them. I think it just has to look like more than them. And so what our goal was to do was… write music that applies to the whole church, not just from one perspective.”
Naomi Raine’s new album “Journey” is out now and available to purchase and stream via https://naomirainemusic.shop/
