Millard spoke with Guideposts.org about how close he came to leaving the band, the message behind this new album and why he\u2019s having more fun than ever praising God through song.<\/p>\n
Why did you want to make this album?<\/strong><\/p>\n After [the album] The Hurt & The Healer<\/em>, we kind of hit a wall. I grew up in a somewhat legalistic church and it taught me that faith is enough, but here\u2019s three more things left just in case. There\u2019s always things left to do to be closer to God. You start a band and do all this stuff to try to please Him and I just hit a point where I thought \u201cMan, I don\u2019t think I can keep up.\u201d It felt like my family life was hanging by a thread. There had to be more to it.<\/p>\n While writing The Hurt & The Healer<\/em>, a friend of mine came back into my life. We hadn\u2019t seen him in a long time and one of the things he said to me that really stopped me in my tracks, he said \u201cHey, you guys work really hard but in case you\u2019ve forgotten, there\u2019s nothing you can do to make Christ love you any more than He already does, so maybe you just need to stop and just rest in the finished work of the cross.\u201d No one\u2019s ever told me to stop before, they\u2019ve always said to try harder. It took a couple of years to understand what that meant and I really thought, at that time, that MercyMe was coming to an end. I thought that\u2019s what I was supposed to do. Literally stop and just take it all in.<\/p>\n At that point, my wife and I had kind of jokingly said we stopped caring what people thought, what radios thought, what labels thought, and we just decided not to keep up with this image and focus on our fellowship with Christ. The second that MercyMe stopped being my identity, instead of quitting, I started falling back in love with it. About that time we had gone back in the studio and started making this new record and that\u2019s the message, from beginning to end. Hence the name Welcome to the New<\/em>. We wanted the message and everything to be different. We said, what\u2019s the [album] we\u2019d love to make, whether it ever gets played on the radio or not? So we just started making that and luckily people are okay with it. One track on that album that\u2019s very personal for you is \u201cDear Younger Me.\u201d Can you talk about why you wanted to write that song?<\/strong><\/p>\n Over the years, my wife and I have gone through grief counseling. Her brother was killed back in 2004 and we probably never dealt with it the proper way, so we went to grief counseling a few years ago and one of the first things the counselor said to me was \u201cWe need to go back into your childhood and unpack that.” I grew up in a pretty abusive situation. My father was a very abusive person until he was diagnosed with cancer my freshman year of high school. When he came to know Christ [after his diagnosis] he became one of the godliest men I\u2019ve ever know. But there\u2019s a lot of damage done, a lot of feeling like it\u2019s your fault. In counseling, one of the things she said was that, “If you ever want to know what you would\u2019ve been like in a healthy family and a God-like environment, just look at your son Charlie.” I started thinking, If I could sit with the 8 year-old version of myself, what would I say to him? It was one of the hardest songs I\u2019ve ever had to write. A lot of people carry those issues with them, they carry that guilt and shame around their neck like it\u2019s part of them. That one is particularly special because of the response that we\u2019ve had. I\u2019ve gotten emails from people saying, “This has broken me free of something that I\u2019ve carried a long time,” so, that\u2019s really cool.<\/p>\n Another song that\u2019s getting a lot of attention is \u201cShake.\u201d It has an old-school sound that\u2019s completely different from anything you guys have done in the past. Why make that the first single?<\/strong><\/p>\n When I almost quit the band, the guys were like “Let\u2019s try to fix what\u2019s broke.” We cut our shows in half and just [changed] everything to where it wasn\u2019t overpowering our lives. I figured I\u2019d take a break and maybe do a solo record a few years down the road. I wanted to make music that was different, that has an old-school vibe and felt current at the same time, so they were really good sports to chase that rabbit with me. When we finished The Hurt and The Healer,<\/em> we thought we\u2019d take two or three years off. We were on the road doing some shows and we started goofing off, messing with some songs and [there was] this track that ended up being \u201cShake.\u201d We started writing to it and it was so different. I loved it, the guys were into it and I made the mistake of sending the demo to a label. They really wanted us to make a record but didn\u2019t want to push the issue so I feel like they kind of leaked the song on YouTube, just putting it out there and it got a huge response, so they were like \u201cHey, we won\u2019t talk about the record but at least make a video for this song and put it out there. If you\u2019re going to take a two-year break, let\u2019s give them something.\u201d So we did the video in October last year and after it got all that attention we were like \u201cWell, we\u2019ve gotta make a record now.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/2.PNG\")
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