Worship Musician Magazine March 2023 | Page 8

and then I ’ ll ask you about the project overall , called Other Side . The song “ Radical Love ( The Joy Song )” was recently released here in the U . S ., and I must tell you that the beginning of the video really showed some great humor when it revealed the first record album in the box to be Abba . Um , tell us about this song ?
[ Jonatan ] Yeah . We really felt when we were writing the song , we were writing it together with a bunch of us from the team in Sweden , and the team in London . And we just felt like we needed a song that just was pure joy . And we felt how kind of as a season as church , a few things were kind of rough , and we just wanted to focus on God ’ s radical love and His joy . And one of the guys just remembered this old prause chorus ( sings ) “ there ’ s a joy , joy , joy , joy down in my heart , down in my heart ”. And we just felt like … and immediately like the producer Jimmy James , who helped us with , producing the whole album … he just did a cool sample of it . And we just felt like that ’ s the simplicity we wanted with the song .
But we also wanted through the whole project was we wanted it to be purely scripture based as well . So that ’ s why the chorus is just strictly scripture , you know ? “ May the God of Hope , fill our hearts with joy and peace ”, and and we just wanted to keep it as scriptural as we could . And I think like , literally the chorus is scripture . So we wanted to combine the things of something as simple as an old almost child-like song with the depth and the power of scripture . So , we
Radical Love ( The Joy Song ) ( Official Music Video ) didn ’ t want to put too much of our own words there . And when we did the video , we wanted to reflect on the amazing history . We have as Swedes , we have a few amazing songwriters and I mean , Abba , and I think Roxette is there as well .
[ WM ] Oh really ? I didn ’ t see Roxette .
[ Jonatan ] ( laughs ) And we wanted to put some of the old Swedish heroes in there just to get a glimpse of the rich songwriting and musician history we have in Sweden and Stockholm . So , it was a mixture of so many things in that song , and I really feel like it has that feeling to it . Especially when it hits that bridge . You almost can ’ t stand still . So yeah . We ’ re so happy with how the outcome of that song is .
[ WM ] That ’ s a great story . Let ’ s talk about the full project . That song is from the project , Other 8 March 2023 Subscribe for Free ...