Worship Musician Magazine September 2020 | Page 36

the orchestra. There was something sacred
about that. The record is called No Stranger,
and I feel like the whole record, for me, is an
understanding and a marveling. May we never
lose the wonder that the King of the world, the
King of the universe, makes Himself known to
us. The scripture that says, “Who am I that you
are mindful of me, but yet, you have made us a
little lower than the angels and crowned us with
honor and glory”. And when you think about
that I think that never losing the wonder, that
in His magnificence and His holiness that He
makes Himself known to us.
I think sometimes in our worship world, if I can
say this without sounding too critical, we have
so many songs that make God our buddy, that
make Him our BFF, almost like we make Him
cuddle if that makes sense. It’s like we bring
it down to, “He does all of this for me”, and
if you take a moment and you look at a lot of
the songs, Jesus is actually not the center, we
are. It’s what He did for me, me, me (laughs).
So I was more compelled to have songs that
reminded us of who He actually is, that He is
not a stranger, that yes He may seem closer
than a brother but He is actually holy and
righteous and perfect, and that God makes
Himself known to us. He is not a stranger to
us and in turn I am not a stranger to Him, and
that’s the place where all of the songs came
from.
[WM] Your new album project No Stranger is
set for release later this month, and includes
some wonderful surprises, including a guest
appearance by Nashville artist Fleurie. Tell us
about the project. I’ve been fortunate to hear
some advance, unreleased audio from it. “Face
to Face” is fabulous. I will ask you about “Praise
You in This Storm” in my next question.
No Stranger
[Natalie] A lot of the music, when you hear
it from start to finish… I still like to listen to
projects in their entirety. Even though we live
in a streaming culture there is this trend where
people are returning to listening to entire
projects. There have been times where that
was the trend, and there have been times
where that’s not what you did, and people still
stream song by song. I myself make playlists
with lots of different songs on them. But I still
wanted to create something that had a thread
and told a story, so that you feel that thread
when you listen to it. One song in particular that
I wrote with Matt Redman and Jonas Myrin,
is called “Presence of the King”. I also had a
friend of mine named Lauren Strahm, whose
artist name is Fleurie. For people who listen to
film and television music, she’s at the top of her
game. And she’s just brilliant. I call her an angel
because her voice is just ethereal, and you
instantly feel this angelic host through her voice.
We go to church together, and last September
we sat through a church conference together
and heard a speaker named Darrell Johnson,
who teaches at Regent University in Vancouver
36 September 2020
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