May 21, 2008 forever changed the life of award-winning singer-songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman. His five-year-old daughter Maria Sue was struck and killed in the driveway of the family home outside Nashville, Tennessee. One of Chapman’s teenage sons was behind the wheel when the little girl stepped out where she shouldn’t have been. Just hours earlier, Chapman and his wife had been celebrating the engagement of their oldest daughter and the impending high school graduation of one of their two sons. Playing nearby were their three younger daughters, all adopted from China. These fresh-faced additions to the family had turned their world upside down and made the whole family ferocious adoption advocates. Now, this awful tragedy would change the course of this family once more.
In the wake of the accident and the loss of Maria, Chapman wasn’t sure he’d ever sing again. Then as spring turned to summer and eventually fall, he found he couldn’t resist reaching for his acoustic guitar to help him try to make sense of what had happened. Like a modern day psalmist, Chapman channeled his grief and pain into songs that expressed his desire to see his daughter again, his newfound obsession with Heaven and his battered-but-still-strong faith in God. The result is Beauty Will Rise, a collection of songs born out of the Chapman family’s walk through loss and their emergence on the other side.
Here, Chapman tells Rhapsody about his unique process for creating this very personal album, his reasons for sharing this private story in such a public forum, and what he hopes listeners will take away.
Rhapsody: In making this project, you didn’t follow the normal process. In fact, you weren’t sure if you’d ever record again. How did this album come about?
SCC: I’ve even resisted calling this an “album” because that conjures up so many thoughts about what that process normally is for me. This collection of songs came out of such a different place of pain and grief and loss -- a deeper place. Because of that I’ve been afraid of letting it fall into those same patterns. There’s something that happens creatively when you share an experience -- after a while it doesn’t necessarily move me the same way every time. Usually that’s okay, but this is too important to ever become a calculated thing or told so much that I distance myself from it. It has to stay fresh.
Rhapsody: So how did you protect against it becoming a story you’ve told so many times that it loses its impact on you?
SCC: By not letting anybody speak into the process, making this record in a private place and making it very personal and not opening it up to too much input. Nobody heard any of the songs. Usually I play them for people, but I didn’t want them to be run through everyone else‘s filter. I’m such a people pleaser -- I need to make everyone like it -- but this time all that took a way backseat to heart and soul and pain and honesty.
Rhapsody: The result is a beautifully raw batch of songs. How are people responding?
SCC: Normally I’m constantly thinking of how is the listener is going to receive a song. You give a gift and you think, “Is this going to mean something to them?” You want to give them something they’ll like. This time, [I found myself saying], “Can I just sit down and tell you what’s been going in with me?”
Rhapsody: Why did you choose “Heaven Is the Face” as the first single, as the song that would introduce this intensely personal album to the public?
SCC: I could have been happy with sending out any song. We definitely discussed the title track because that covers the whole idea that out of the ashes beauty will rise. “Beauty Will Rise” is definitely the one epic song on the record, but musically this single feels more like the overall feel of the record. And when I did finally play the songs for people, this is the one they responded to.
Rhapsody: Many of these songs came about while you were on tour with Michael W. Smith, right? How did that shape the album?
SCC: I’d say probably more than half was recorded on that tour. We set up in dressing rooms and shower stalls, even a church office cubicle. [My producer] Brent Milligan was out on that tour and I thought, “This guy will get this.” And he plays cello so that found its way into almost every song on this album. Acoustic guitar and cello -- for me that’s the sound of hopeful sadness.
Rhapsody: As a professional songwriter, processing the loss of Maria by writing it about it was no doubt therapeutic, but why put yourself through the pain of sharing those songs in such a public way over and over again? You could have just tucked them away somewhere for your family and friends to experience privately.
SCC: My family and I came to this conclusion last summer when we did some interviews with Larry King and “People” magazine. We made a decision toget
Here, Chapman tells Rhapsody about his unique process for creating this very personal album, his reasons for sharing this private story in such a public forum, and what he hopes listeners will take away.
Rhapsody: In making this project, you didn’t follow the normal process. In fact, you weren’t sure if you’d ever record again. How did this album come about?
SCC: I’ve even resisted calling this an “album” because that conjures up so many thoughts about what that process normally is for me. This collection of songs came out of such a different place of pain and grief and loss -- a deeper place. Because of that I’ve been afraid of letting it fall into those same patterns. There’s something that happens creatively when you share an experience -- after a while it doesn’t necessarily move me the same way every time. Usually that’s okay, but this is too important to ever become a calculated thing or told so much that I distance myself from it. It has to stay fresh.
SCC: By not letting anybody speak into the process, making this record in a private place and making it very personal and not opening it up to too much input. Nobody heard any of the songs. Usually I play them for people, but I didn’t want them to be run through everyone else‘s filter. I’m such a people pleaser -- I need to make everyone like it -- but this time all that took a way backseat to heart and soul and pain and honesty.
Rhapsody: The result is a beautifully raw batch of songs. How are people responding?
SCC: Normally I’m constantly thinking of how is the listener is going to receive a song. You give a gift and you think, “Is this going to mean something to them?” You want to give them something they’ll like. This time, [I found myself saying], “Can I just sit down and tell you what’s been going in with me?”
Rhapsody: Why did you choose “Heaven Is the Face” as the first single, as the song that would introduce this intensely personal album to the public?
SCC: I could have been happy with sending out any song. We definitely discussed the title track because that covers the whole idea that out of the ashes beauty will rise. “Beauty Will Rise” is definitely the one epic song on the record, but musically this single feels more like the overall feel of the record. And when I did finally play the songs for people, this is the one they responded to.
Rhapsody: Many of these songs came about while you were on tour with Michael W. Smith, right? How did that shape the album?
SCC: I’d say probably more than half was recorded on that tour. We set up in dressing rooms and shower stalls, even a church office cubicle. [My producer] Brent Milligan was out on that tour and I thought, “This guy will get this.” And he plays cello so that found its way into almost every song on this album. Acoustic guitar and cello -- for me that’s the sound of hopeful sadness.
Rhapsody: As a professional songwriter, processing the loss of Maria by writing it about it was no doubt therapeutic, but why put yourself through the pain of sharing those songs in such a public way over and over again? You could have just tucked them away somewhere for your family and friends to experience privately.
SCC: My family and I came to this conclusion last summer when we did some interviews with Larry King and “People” magazine. We made a decision toget
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Steven Curtis Champman helped our daughter and her husband adopt sisters (10 & 16) from Lithuania through an adoption grant. They are with all of us now and I can't even imagine losing one of them. Our hearts and prayers are with his whole family.