we’ re like,“ Let’ s do it.“ And I think a lot of the motivation was to just try something different for both of us. We always wanted to do something together and create a record together. We write so many songs for each other outside of this record. So that’ s how it started.
[ Benjamin ] I think the main risk for us in this process was in that time constraint. Like Aodhán stated only giving it 10 days and saying,“ All right, we’ re going to get whatever we get in this period. We’ re going to have to get it all done.” We actually ended up recording 17 songs that week! And so we obviously have the 12 of them and there might be more to come at some point, but it was scary, I think, going into it definitely felt like stepping out on the boat and I think either of us ever want to make something that we’ re not proud of or even more so it doesn’ t carry the heart of what it is we’ re about. And so yeah, it felt right from the start like a God thing and that he was in it and through it, even just the way that it all came together, we asked the studio with three weeks’ notice if they had these specific 10 days free and they were pretty much the only 10 days they had free all year in a block like that.
So just right from the offset, it just felt like, oh, this is something that needs to happen. It was actually so much so much fun. I went into the studio thinking,“ Oh my goodness, is this going to work?” It’ s just daunting. And then after the first day it was like,“ Oh no, no, no. It’ s like we’ re walking on the water now. It’ s working!
[ WM ] Yeah. It’ s a bit like jumping into the deep end of the swimming pool and you’ re not sure if you could swim, right?
[ Aodhán ] Yeah.
[ Benjamin ] Exactly. It’ s a bit like that.
[ WM ] So what about the title song? Tell me about that.
[ Aodhán ] All I was going to say was you kind of had the title song,“ Happy to Be Here”. It was probably one of the only ideas that we had walking into the week. So the week before we went into the studio, Ben had sent me a text being like,“ Hey, I had this idea.” It wasn’ t fully finished, but it was called“ Happy to Be Here.” And he’ s like,“ I think this could be really cool for the project.” And I was like,“ Yeah, this is amazing.” But then when we got into the week, I think that song became significant because the title said we were just so happy to be there. I think we were surrounded by people for we’ ve known for 20 years. We had a lot of new friends in town that everyone just came together so last minute. It was really crazy. And there was this general happiness and joy amongst a lot of us reconnecting with a lot of people about our past at Hillsong and there was just this general feeling of,“ Where else would we rather be than in this place with our friends and in the presence of God, making music.” And so that song just felt like the anchor really for the project in a lot of ways. And I think within the first two or three days, people were asking us,“ What are you going to call this project?” And it was really between Happy to Be Here and then A God Thing, which is what the whole week felt like, a God thing. But Happy to Be Here was where we landed.
[ Benjamin ] And I think within that song there’ s a lightness to that sentence … happy to be here. But then I like the way the verse was unpacked where it’ s like here in your
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