and yeah , we went to Wyoming and there ' s something beautiful , magical , so spiritual about that place . We love getting to write songs over there and yeah , I think even now looking back at the songs or the themes that you see throughout the album , we were surprised . I was talking to my brother today , and he ' s like , “ Wow , I love the theme that you see throughout the album .”
It ' s interesting now that the songs are out , because we were not intentionally trying to have a theme . We didn ' t come up with a title and then wrote songs about the title . We just wrote songs . We wrote 60 to 80 songs for this album . When we finally picked the 12 or the 11 that made it to the album , we started to see this connection and the movement in these songs . And a lot of it is the idea of being thankful . This idea that we could be in the middle of a storm , in the middle of crazy time and still we knew deep in our hearts that we wanted to be grateful . Even that it was hard to be grateful . We knew that ' s what we wanted to do . And now listening to the songs , it ' s like , yeah , that ' s what came out of one of the darkest and hardest moments in our history and in our personal lives . They were songs of gratitude .
[ Mariah ] Yeah . I mean , you don ' t have to leave where you are to be inspired , but there ' s something so good for us about just stepping back . To what that means it ’ s just taking a minute to just reflect . Or if it means driving 30 minutes outside of your town or where your church is , there ' s something so beautiful about that . Because you get to have just an outside perspective and be , “ Oh , aren ' t we lucky ?” Aren ' t we so blessed that we get to be part of this community and that these things are going on and especially being in L . A ., in order to get out of where we were . So , I mean at that time it ' s claustrophobic . It was very dark , very claustrophobic in L . A ., and very difficult to be here . And so , for that , it was just like healing individually . I think for us just to be like , okay , we ' re extremely blessed . Just to be alive and just to have each other , to have a community . Just to have that , zoom out to be , oh wait , no … there ' s lots of good .
[ WM ] That ' s right . And no , gum on the sidewalks , right ?
[ Mariah ] ( laughs ) Yeah . For real ! And horses and moose too .
[ WM ] You ’ re located in Hollywood , just steps from the TCL Chinese Theater ( Grauman ’ s ), the Hollywood Walk of Fame , Hollywood and Highland , classic movie palaces , superheroes posing for pictures , and tourist shops . Yet when you peal back the layers of the Hollywood glitz ,