[ WM ] Which brings me to Carrie Underwood ’ s new hymns project , My Savior , which you coproduced with her . The songs chosen and their arrangements are primarily Americanborn hymns . Can you tell us about the project overall , the way songs were chosen , and the recording process used during a pandemic ? I will address some of the individual tracks next .
[ David ] Yeah , so Carrie came to me and told me that with everything going on with the pandemic and obviously live music , it felt like everything had been put on hold . She said that she had always really wanted to do something like this and had actually planned to do it during this time frame before everything happened . When she came to me , I was honored .
We co-produced her last record , Cry Pretty , together so I thought it would be really cool . I mean , let ’ s just be honest , Carrie is one of the greatest voices in music and definitely of our time , she ’ s incredible . I thought what would be really amazing about this would be that , when you have someone like her and you pair it with these incredibly heartfelt songs that are kind of cornerstones of people ’ s faith , it really gives you a chance and an opportunity to make something that can be around for a really long time and that will hopefully mean a lot to people .
studio and limited contact and following all of the protocols . So , it was really just me and her knocking it out . It was a really great record to be a part of and there were some moments that were really magical . There were just some really special moments that were really cool .
[ WM ] Some might think it odd for Carrie to record a hymns record , despite the fact that these songs are part of her . But they won ’ t be disappointed to hear a true country sound with this project . After all , Country and Gospel music are first cousins , and when we look back , Elvis ’ s biggest selling record was a Christmas album with religious content , and Aretha Franklin ’ s Amazing Grace was her biggest selling record . Any thoughts on this ?
[ David ] I think for people who are fans of Carrie and her music they are not surprised that she would do this , and I think if you ’ re on the outside looking in you might see it as a bit of a surprise . I just think this is a big part of her life and who she is . She made an incredible Christmas album and she just felt like it was the time to do it . We approached this in a way … you know , with Carrie , she ’ s made a lot of records and has had a ton of hit songs , and there is sort of an expectation with everything she does . But we kind of wanted to make sure we did something that was true to the songs , and for me that was something that I wanted to turn on during a Sunday morning drive , and have it feel good to your soul and good to your
I know Carrie has a lot of fans that love the fact that she ’ s never shied away from her faith . So , we honestly started the process like we would do any other record . We got together and got on the guitar and piano and just sort of started talking almost like we were writing songs , and we would think about songs and play them , and we kind of came up with some stuff and just tried to create a little something before we went to the studio so we kind of had an idea of what we wanted to do on some of the songs . But of course , as you get going things just start to happen , maybe there are some pleasant surprises , or maybe you just haven ’ t hit it yet .
With Covid 19 , we definitely kept things as safe as possible . Everyone was tested . So , it was a certain number of consecutive days at the photo by Cameron Premo