If you have listened to any form of Christian radio in the last two years , you have heard Anne Wilson ’ s country-tinged evangelical anthems ringing through the airwaves . “ My Jesus ” was her first big hit ( 31 million YouTube views later ), then “ Sunday Sermons ” and “ Hey Girl ” followed as well as Dove Awards , K-Love fan awards , a Grammy nomination and more rolled in . But all of this started through a family tragedy and Anne just pouring out her heart to God in a worship song .
[ Bruce ] It ’ s nice to meet you . I ’ ve watched your success in Christian music , and I ’ ve enjoyed the evangelistic elements to your songs . Your music career , in a way has been tied to the loss of your brother Jacob . It seems even in deep loss , the Lord works things out for good and you ’ ve seen great success in music , but still doesn ’ t take away the pain and sorrow from the loss of your brother . And I ’ m sure you ’ d give back all the accolades and music awards in a heartbeat to get Jacob back . Tell us about how his all began back in 2017 with a worship song at your brother ’ s funeral ?
[ Anne Wilson ] Yep . So , I grew up wanting to be an astronaut and work for NASA … very different than what I do now . ( laughing ) And that was like my passion growing up . I had grown up in a Christian House . My parents are amazing . They always raised me in church , and I became a Christian when I was in seventh grade . I fell in love with who God was and I was on fire for him at the age of 12 , which was amazing cuz I was headed down a pretty bad path in seventh grade . And then I felt like God just kind of rescued me and it was great . And so , I went to NASA in eighth grade . We met with NASA and we were on this path to hopefully be an astronaut . My family was with me and it was great .
And so up until that point , my only musical abilities were playing piano . I had grown up where my parents always made the three of us do some sort of music . And so we chose to take piano lessons and it was something that I honestly did not like . But it was like something that we had no choice . And so all three of us , my sister and my brother and I played piano . And so up until that point , that was it .
And then , like you mentioned , my life pretty drastically changed . On June 7th , 2017 , I was with my family . We were asleep at our house in Kentucky , and we get a knock on the front door from a police officer telling us that my brother had been killed in a car accident . He had already been gone for about four hours at that point and they had already cleaned up the accident and everything .
He didn ’ t live at home at the time , so we , you know , we weren ’ t expecting him or anything like that . But it was very , very traumatic , very tragic
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