augment the sound of the people in any way . When you hear just two or three claps , it ' s two or three claps . We could have layered it and made it sound like 60 , but I ' m like , " We don ' t need to do that , let ' s just let it be what it was and have that intimacy captured ." That ' s it .
[ WM ] “ Something in the Water ” is by far your most popular song on the
Brooke Fraser Spotify page . It ' s a non-vertical song and yet it ’ s still the most popular song by over 10,000,000 plays ! When you put on the proverbial artist hat , you ' re really speaking to an audience versus pointing a congregation upwards in worship . How do you approach bridging the dichotomy between vertical worship and horizontal songwriting ?
[ Brooke ] Gosh , I just love it . I love it . I did a course on a platform called
CREATR last year where I talk about this . I had a songwriting course that I talk about the aspect of both these perspectives , or both of these launching points , if you will , in terms of writing . But when I think about the songs that led me to a place of faith in Christ , they weren ' t necessarily Christian songs or they weren ' t worship songs . There ' s a verse in Revelation which talks about the place of utter darkness , and it talks about there the sound of music or singing will not be heard . Which leads me to think that music is something that originates in heaven , and we get to have it here on earth whether that gift is redeemed or not .
So whether that ' s Paul McCartney writing a song , or Chris Tomlin writing a song , the very gift and language of music is something that is heavenly . Obviously , when that connects ... when that gift is given to somebody who then makes a decision to follow Jesus , that gift gets connected to its redemptive purpose then you get these expressions that can be vertical . But even for the person who is unredeemed , the gift and the call of God is irrevocable , so the gift might not be connected to its redemptive purpose , but the gift still has its origins in something heavenly .
Which is why you can still listen to a Beatles song and be moved by it even though it ' s not written from a place of faith . Because this art and this language , this commonality in humanity is a gift to us , it ' s a bread crumb to us . Just like if we look at creation , we look at sunsets , we look at mountains and we are moved by them because they are remnants and echoes of the creator in those things that we see . So it is with music , when we listen to a song or a melody that moves us , it ' s because perhaps there ' s something in it that ' s an echo of eternity that provokes something in us .
For me , before I came to Christ , I can point to the songs that did that in me . I remember being like six years old or something and hearing Mike and the Mechanics “ The Living Years ” and being so moved by those lyrics , like it ' s too late when we die . I ' m six years old and I ' m having this existential crisis in the back of our Toyota Corolla going , " It ' s too late when we die , what am I going to do with my life ?” These songs that can provoke these questions . And so , for me then when I was already songwriting but then came to Christ , it never occurred to me to stop writing those songs . Because if anything , there ' s an urgency to being able to express things in that way .
There ' s people who they ' ll never put on a worship playlist on their Spotify , but maybe through the magic of algorithms a Brooke Fraser song will pop up and it will be a song that meets them where they ' re at . Whether they ' re walking through grief and it ' s a song like my song “ Ice on Her Lashes ” from my Flags album , or my song “ Albertine ” from the album Albertine . I ' ve talked to so many people or heard