New Artist Spotlight

The Influencers have been honing their craft for years internally, serving those God has placed in their path at the international Influencers Church which resides in both Atlanta and Australia. We asked them to share a bit of who they are and what went in to making their new release, Just the Cross.

 

Artist Name:
Influencers

Hometown:
Adelaide, a beautiful city on the South coast of Australia (for the Aussies in our team). Most of our American team grew up around Metro Atlanta, Georgia.

Label:
Independent

Project info:
Just the Cross is available May 17

Hobbies/Interests Apart from Music:
Sporting culture is alive and well in Australia, so anything from wakeboarding to basketball to golf!

Last Netflix Binge:
Chloe: Suits is a killer! If you haven’t seen the last episode, you better get on it!
Mark: I loved Final Table! The Aussies should have won!

Musical Influences:
We love anything with catchy hooks and fun melodies. I think our writing is influenced by artists like Lany, Glades, The Chainsmokers, Halsey, the ‘pop rising’ genre. Growing up with Hillsong United & Planetshakers also had a huge impact on most of our team—those songs shaped us as teenagers!

Very First Musical Purchase:
Danae: Does a portable cassette player count?! I think CD walkmans were just getting trendy so I found one at a garage sale for $2 and played Britney Spears cassettes that I’d recorded myself from the radio on it in my early teenage rebellion haha…but seriously, it was an old acoustic guitar (again from a garage sale) for about $5 when I was 10. It was probably only good for firewood but I loved that thing…
Chloe: My parents bought me a terrible little keyboard when I started taking piano lessons in grade two. By grade three my best friend and I would write songs in our school lunch break and then put on concerts for our families at our sleepovers!! That keyboard was so loved! In about grade 5 they upgraded me and bought a great Yahama electric piano which I still have and adore.
Mark: Easy. P.O.D. Satellite

If you had only five words to describe your new album, it would be…?
Anthemic, accessible melodies & stellar sound

Do you have a favorite song from the new album? Why?
Chloe: Choosing a favorite may actually be impossible for me! Haha! However, I can say that one of my absolute favorites is “Father’s Love”. For me, personally, I have always struggled to accept the truth that I cannot, nor do I need to, earn God’s love. As an oldest child I am very driven and have always battled with a performance mentality of wanting to please and impress not only my parents, but anyone in authority over me. Writing “Father’s Love” was a challenge for me to really let the truth of God’s love sink in; that I could never make Him love me more and that no matter what I do, His love is sure. I remember bawling my eyes out when we sang in during one of our morning sessions at our 2018 Conference as God really worked on my heart. This song would have to be a favorite!

What are your hopes for the new project?
Mark: If you listen closely you can hear thousands of prayers we recorded all throughout the album process. It sounds like rain at times. Our hope for this album is that as people are listening to Just The Cross, the prayers of thousands would be like rain to a weary soul. That it would be more than just music, it would be healing and a powerful encounter with Jesus.

What was the last song you listened to on your playlist or stereo?
Mark: Ed Sheeran – “I Don’t Care” (with Justin Bieber)

What was the last book you read?
Danae: Songs of Heaven by Amanda Fergusson. I keep circling back to this one—so much gold and decades of songwriting wisdom hidden in these pages.

Name a song that you wish you’d written (and why)?
Chloe: As a shameless Taylor Swift fan I would love to be able to claim her song “Love Story.” I am a hopeless 15-year-old romantic deep down and I still belt out this song in the car!

What message do you hope listeners will take away from your music, regardless of what they believe?
Chloe: Regardless of what anyone believes, I pray that they can listen to our music and know that they are unconditionally loved by God and that He has made a way for them to be brought near to Him to experience true joy, peace and love for all of eternity!

What was the songwriting process like on this record?
Chloe: I think what God has taught us is that some songs are written on a journey and can’t be birthed any other way than first to be lived out. With many of our songs, they are literally the journey that we have gone on as a church and as a team. Songs like, “Further”, were written out of a season that God had us in, of wanting to go further and deeper into the plans that He had for us.
Danae: We have a huge culture of collaboration in our team—we hold songs loosely and are really intentional about receiving and looking for feedback. That being said, often songs will start with a message/concept/revelation that one of our writers has personally, and they’ll then bring that to the team after some initial thoughts/scratch ideas. The process of development can then take days, weeks or (in some cases) years as we workshop ideas together and really try to discover the journey that the song is taking us on and where God is leading it. For this album we’ve been really intentional to go away on writing retreats to block out the noise of life and really have some time to mull over lyrics and melodies together before bringing it to our producer Mark Griffiths for pre-production. The entire journey is really special as it happens in Australia and Atlanta across our global team—sometimes via late night facetimes or 4am voice memos, but I wouldn’t have it any other way!
Mark: 49 days out from the live recording we had written 4 songs. We asked the Holy Spirit to help us. Songs flowed. We recorded 12 of them.

Leave a Reply