CCM Spotlight: Ginny Owens Shares New Music Inspired by Life in NYC

“I think we have to remember that people are wrestling with hard things. And so, to wrap every song up in a bow, I know that is good for radio. It is not good for life. It is not good for people.”

That conviction sits at the heart of Ginny Owens’ latest season of music, a body of work shaped by conversations, theology, and daily life in New York City. “I have been working on these songs for the last five years” Owens says. “And so, I felt like when the fifth one was done, it was time to release.”

Those songs eventually formed Different Kind of Water, a project she describes not as a collection of answers, but as an invitation into honest dialogue.

“These songs are all spiritual conversations that I love having with my friends who aren’t yet believers living in New York City,” she explains. “And so, all of these songs are about just sort of life challenges that I think bring us to Jesus.”

Owens’ move to New York reshaped how she experiences both life and calling. Owens, who has been blind since childhood, describes the city as something she experiences through movement and sound as much as. “I love walking around… the way I can see the city is through everyone else walking and talking, and there’s so many just sounds and smells and voices.”

But the relocation also fulfilled a long-standing spiritual goal. “I wanted to go to seminary. That’s always been a dream of mine,” she says. “I’ve really wanted to go to seminary in an urban context where I was going to be able to learn from people who were very practically… teaching the gospel.”  Her time there included studying with the late pastor and author Timothy Keller. “It was an incredible blessing, every bit as magnificent as you can imagine… and then I just never left.”

That new environment helped loosen the relentless pace she once felt during her busiest CCM years. “When I was in the thick of all things CCM music in Nashville, there was just an urgency to everything… you have to take every opportunity.” Over time, that urgency gave way to trust.

“I have learned that the Lord has a way of just opening the doors he wants opened no matter how diligently I’m running after it.”  Success, she says now, looks very different. “I think just the opportunity to continue to do music is what success is these days.”

Owens speaks candidly about her hope that Christian music continues to grow artistically and spiritually. “One of the beautiful things when I started in music was that you really could talk about the Lord and you could talk about your spiritual journey in a very open way,” she says. “I crave depth in the music. I really want to hear music continue to be like hearts laid bare before the Lord.”

Her concern is pastoral as much as artistic, rooted in how people actually experience faith.

“People need to know that in the Psalms they all wrestled with all kinds of struggles… ‘Where are you, God?’”  For Owens, songwriting has always been personal, but that instinct has deepened in this chapter. “I hope that they hear their struggles in these songs. And I hope that they hear that there is hope amid those struggles.”

The title track reflects what Owens describes as a universal restlessness. “It is just about this endless longing that we all have… the human condition is we want and we want and we want.”

That longing, she suggests, ultimately points beyond itself. “If we find in ourselves a desire that we can’t find anything to satisfy, it probably means that we are made for another world.” ‘

Her song “God Will Meet You There” grew out of watching friends navigate suffering without easy explanations.

“There were more questions than answers… Friends were just facing really difficult suffering,” she says.

“The only thing I could think to say to them was… God is with you. He wants to meet you in whatever broken place you find yourself.”

In a culture that often rewards immediacy, Ginny Owens is choosing patience, reflection, and songs that leave room for mystery. Or, as she puts it simply, songs that acknowledge life as it really is, trusting that hope is found not in easy endings, but in a God who meets people in the middle of their story.

Discover Ginny Owens’ Different Kind of Water wherever you listen to music and learn more about her journey and at GinnyOwens.com.