Platinum-selling songwriter John Mark McMillan has just released his first worship music in over eight years. His new album release, Cosmic Supreme( Anotherland), is available everywhere. His nationwide tour is also in full swing. Check for cities and dates near you.
[ Alex ] It’ s good to meet you. Thanks for this time today.
[ John Mark McMillan ] It’ s good to meet you too! Thank you for doing it kind of quickly. The next few weeks are going to be hard cause I’ m going to be on the road, so it’ s a perfect day.
[ WM ] Well, I’ m glad it worked out! As soon as I heard the title of your new project, Cosmic Supreme, I thought of another North Carolinian, and that’ s John Coltrane, and his release A Love Supreme. I wondered if there was any kind of connection there?
[ John Mark ] There is.( smiles) The whole idea behind Cosmic Supreme is sort of a way to talk about a couple different things. Obviously, there’ s kind of the idea of Christ and all things are by Him, through Him, and for Him, and everything that’ s made and how He holds all things together. But the other is that if He holds all things together. It’ s also a way to talk about how He holds my story together. He holds my past and my whole life. He embraces my whole life, and I’ m able to also embrace my life, my failures and my achievements. I can embrace it all because He does. And of course, love is the word, right? The agape for that. And so, there is a hint that if it’ s a cosmic supreme, it’ s sort of like the love is sort of hidden in there. So, it is like a cosmic love. But cosmic love didn’ t sound like a great album title. Cosmic Supreme sounded like a great album title. It is kind of implied that the love of God is a big, big love that holds all things together. So, it’ s kind of maybe a little bit of a pretentious way to say that.
[ WM ] I picked up on that, and I have to ask you before we get into this, when you originally recorded and released your song,“ How He Loves,” and you did that as an independent I might add, the song seemed to take on an organic and spontaneous life of its own, which is the way it really should be. How did the song find its way into Dave Crowder’ s hands and so many other artists?
[ John Mark ] Yep. So, for David specifically, there was a worship leader who was one of his good friends, Eddie Kirkland.
Eddie was going to record another one of my songs and my friend, John Duke, was like,“ No, no, no. You need to record this song.” So, Eddie Kirkland recorded that one. Eddie gave his cd to David Crowder and David heard it on the airplane, and I guess it immediately he felt a connection to the song. And so I guess maybe a year later he was doing his own album and he wanted to record it, and he reached out to me,
He asked if he could record it, and if he could change one of the lines in the song. And I initially said,“ No.” And then he reached back, he said,“ Please.” He’ s like, I just think it’ s going to open up new doors, so we’ re going to work on the line together. He ended up doing it the other way, and I was like,“ Well, I have a couple ideas.” He said,“ Well, I already recorded it, it’ d be real hard to go back and redo it.” And I said,“ Yeah, that’ s fine. That’ s cool.” And that’ s kind of how that happened.
[ WM ] And then it became the kiss heard round the world.
[ John Mark ] It did.( both laugh)
[ WM ] It’ s funny because something controversial would actually be included within worship. When I was running Vineyard Music
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