Country Star Josh Turner: 'I Serve a Savior'
Josh Turner has finished all of his Christmas shopping, but he’s hoping you haven’t.
The Country music star just released his first-ever Gospel album, I Serve A Savior, and is partnering with Cracker Barrel this holiday season to share the good news.
“Every time I've worked with [Cracker Barrel], it's been a pleasure,” Turner says. “Once I found out that I was doing this Gospel Record, they wanted to do something with me and get the record in the store again.”
The title track, a song Turner co-wrote in 2016, kicked off his journey of making this faith-based project. In an interview with Billboard.com, he said that after recording it, “Everything just kind of fell into place. I felt like it was my time and, more importantly, that it was God's time.”
"I Serve a Savior" is getting some love on the charts and YouTube as well. One commenter even said that Turner’s song is “better theology than most pulpits these days”.
“Well, I guess that's a compliment, but it's also embarrassing. I actually wrote that song two years ago, before I even knew this Gospel record was even a possibility or an opportunity,” he says. “But, when I was choosing songs for this record, I was thinking one day, I need to go back and look at the songs that I've written to see if anything fits and the first song I came across was with this one. When I heard it, I'm like, ‘man, this will be perfect for this record.’ I just knew that I wanted to basically write a modern-day hymn if I could. And, so that's the direction that we went in.”
“And so, I just really wanted to write about what it's like to serve a Savior. And, I knew I had a lot to write in a short amount of time. So, I had to establish who my Savior was, which is Jesus Christ, and why it is that I'm serving him, and what servitude really means, what true servitude really means."
"So, when the second verse came up, I really wanted to add some scripture into it and so instead of trying to incorporate it into the song, like as part of the melody, I came across this passage in John where I couldn't shorten it any. So, I decided to do it as a recitation and I think it's a cool moment on the record. I'm glad it's on there and you know, I wanted to be accurate. And so, that was a big part of why I had that scripture passage in there. I'm always just trying to make sure that whatever I'm singing about spiritually -- that it's biblically based.”
