[ Crowder ] I did try to channel him a couple of times , you could hear it in the background . They turned it down really too low , I think it should have been featured more prominently ‘ by James Brown .’ I had the dance moves going on too . Well , we should have rolled video on it .
[ WM ] So second question . You win the prize for the first songwriter to use the word “ amnesia ” in a worship song . Did you snicker to yourself when you realized you had pulled that off ?
[ Crowder ] Well , we knew at the time , as I said , I usually get edited and you know , people are used to like , “ I don ' t know about that one ”. But I think as we push the envelope over the years , I ' ve started to get away with more . So , we knew going in , this is unusual . We would try different words there . It was just because everybody knows what that means , you know ?
Why would I be forgetting something that ' s that obvious ? Hey man , God ' s people ! You could say , “ I keep being just like the Israelites and forgetful of a thing ”. And amnesia sure does catch your ear . And so it made the cut . I ' m proud of it .
[ WM ] Well , it struck home with me because every time I even publish this monthly magazine , I just have to remember to have faith in God , that it is going to all come out with the ads and content and everything else needed . And every time He ' s faithful , but I don ' t know why I have amnesia . I forget that last month he did the same thing .
[ Crowder ] Yeah . One discussion we had about that word particularly was that you almost feel not at fault in a sense , it ' s part of our nature that we war with , it ' s part of how we ' re put together .
And amnesia felt like just a little ‘ blame displacement ’. I just got amnesia , what can I say ? I ' m just a little forgetful , what can I say ? And since so much of the writing came out of the idea of the promised land … Milk and Honey , that was a lot of the conversations when I get into these songwriting moments . Just trying to paint the overall picture , where the album was headed .
And , and I mean , if you ' ve ever been given a story or a parable or a fabled example of amnesia , the Israelites seem to be top of the list . Like , “ I ' m tired of bread coming from the sky ”. So I felt like the word wound up making the cut on a lot of different levels . Theologically it made sense as well as just grabbing the ear in a way that caused you to ( I guess ) feel like you ' re participating in a very common experience … as people that are trying to follow God .
[ WM ] “ Good God Almighty ” is a celebration ,