- 2022-03-13
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MUSIC
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Ben Rector Releases New Album “The Joy of Music”: Streaming
Nashville-based singer-songwriter Ben Rector released his eighth studio album “The Joy of Music” along with a new music video for “Steady Love” on March 11, 2022.
It is his first album in four years since the 2018 album “Magic”.
The album comprises 13-track, featuring guest appearances from Dave Koz, Snoop Dogg, Kenny G, Aaron Sterling and Taylor Goldsmith.
“When I started making The Joy of Music I wanted to be willing to take chances and chase after anything that felt magnetic, to push past my comfort zone and be okay with failing,” Ben Rector told People about the album. “I spent a lot of time being really afraid to fail and then I realized that that wasn't a great way to go through life or make art. I'm in a place of deep gratitude for the opportunity to make art that I love and am genuinely excited to put this record out into the world.”
Also, Ben Rector shared on social media, “The Joy of Music is finally here. I am proud of this album and I hope listening to the songs brings you as much joy as writing and recording them brought me. Huge thanks to Snoop Dogg, Kenny G, Dave Koz, Taylor Goldsmith, and the One Voice Children's Choir for joining me on it. I'm not sure where this album will end up with regard to charts or sales or awards (obviously I would love for it to crush), but I am so, so grateful to have had the privilege of pouring myself into something I really loved and believed in for the past couple years. Hope you guys love it.”- The accompanying music video was directed by Ben Kadie. “This video is really special to me, essentially it's depicting a person's view of themselves at each phase of their life," Ben Rector said of the video. “When you're young, you're the center of the universe, you're larger than life (in this video, the giant paper mâché version of me,) but the older you get, the hope is your ego gets smaller, you take up a little less space in your world and people and things you love take up more (which is the ethos of the song and I think probably what we were made for.) Fun fact, the paper mâché version of me behind the curtain was so, so large, and the video doesn't quite capture it.”
Ben Rector explained of some track for the album.
“Steady Love”
“I recorded my parts and did mix revisions in this very spot about a year ago, and this morning I listened to it on a streaming service with the rest of you. I really like this song and I hope it feels like a warm hug. I think it can be easy to feel like our lives are supposed to be full of excitement, but I don't think we were meant to live in a highlight reel. I think we were made for good, steady love..”
“Heroes”
“Heroes is a song about realizing you can't see life like you did when you a kid. It's about getting out into the great big world, expecting it to fit inside your worldview, clean and neat, and instead realizing that the puzzle pieces of life don't fit together perfectly (or at all sometimes). Seeing the world in anew way doesn't mean that things like hope or love or faith aren't real, I believe they very much are, it's just that sometimes living in the nuances and tensions of reality makes me miss the time before I knew life was complicated. I hope the song feels like a pat on the back to anyone who is trying to make sense of the disparity between the way thought things would be and the way things are. It's me saying, 'Yeah. Me too.'” -
“Daughter”
“I listened to this song many more times than I was trying to during the record making process. Jane heard it while I was doing mix revisions and for several months afterward, anytime we were it the car she asked to listen to it ('Daddy, play the JANIE song!!'). The intro is a voice memo of me practicing it (in between writing and recording I'll play a song a billion times working out parts/arrangement/production), and two-year-old Jane running up and asking to hear it again. It's an anthem for fathers and mothers of small children but also just for anyone who generally exudes dad vibes (so essentially me my whole adult life).”
“Sunday” featuring Snoop Dogg
“It was sunday of masters last year and I was posted up in my front yard with my laptop in a lawn chair, elevating a recently destroyed ankle (high ankle sprain and compression fractures) when I heard the track that became 'sunday' playing in an instagram post of my favorite golf podcast. I immediately started singing 'you got me feeling like a sunday' over the music and texted one of the guys on the podcast to see what the track was, and in an afternoon wrote the lyrics and melody that exit now. I earned that I knew one of the guys who'd made the beat, so I sent them what I'd written and we decided to finish the track together (later putting on some finishing touches with longtime cohort John Fields). I'm a pessimist by nature, but the minute the chorus was dine, I knew I wanted Snoop on the song and for some crazy reazon believed that it would happen. I think the phrase 'what a time to be alive' gets overused, but guys, I'm doing a song with Snoop Dogg and it absolutely slaps. What a time to be alive. Extra fun fact, the guy who made the original beat's working title for it was 'sunday morning'(the recording using that beat is named something different).”
“Joy”
“Joy was (fittingly) the last song I recorded for the album. The music was something we often sound checked with on Magic: The tour (I always loved it but never could put words to it). I had a studio booked to record the piano vocal version of 'TheBest Is Yet To Come' and about a week out realized that would only take an hour or so and we'd have the studio the whole day, so I started thinking about what else I could record. I was hesitant to dive in because I'd been working on the record for so long; it felt like building a house and deciding during final touches to build an addition, but it kept nagging at me so I set out to finish the lyrics. I finished the night before the studio and wasn't sure if it would work or not (towards the end of the recording process your judgement isn't usually great; you can start wanting to chase different ideas or make changes that aren't very good), but listening to it now it's one of my favorite moments on the record. Fun fact: when the choir recorded, I couldn't be there. After I'd signed off on their parts I called back 15-20 minutes later on the off chance anyone was still there to try another idea I had. I filly expected them to be gone but when Calvin answered the engineer has hopped on the drums and they were all still there, singing and dancing around to the song. That's the highest compliment I've maybe ever been paid and it made my year.” - source : Apple Music
