Brandon Heath
“I’ve been thinking about heaven a lot.”
That’s the first thing Brandon Heath reveals when he sits down to talk about his eighth studio record, The Ache. It makes sense considering the events that have unfolded in the award-winning artist’s life. Shortly after he started work on the new 12-track collection – his second LP with Centricity Music – his mother entered palliative care. Knowing a goodbye was imminent, the Platinum-selling singer found himself wrestling with a certain ache he’s experienced only a few times in his life.
He first felt the sensation shortly after his parents divorced when he was three. While his single mom worked, he spent a lot of time at a babysitter’s house, and Heath vividly recalls a patch of grass in her yard where he could see a motel in the distance where his father was employed.
In truth, holding the tension of loss and longing, The Ache as a whole solidifies what’s most important to Heath – his family, his faith, his community and his ultimate belief that there is life after death. Perhaps the biggest lesson the album teaches is that the intrinsic ache we all experience this side of heaven points us to the things that matter most.
“It feels like a thing that God put in us. It’s this ability to feel connected to people,” he remarks of the emotion he’s tried his best to articulate, adding, “This has been my season of sorrow, but it helps me to engage with it just by writing about it. That’s what music has always done for me.”
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