Concept Albums About Grief
It's okay not to be okay...
Hi Pal,
Welcome to another newsletter. I’ve been writing here for over a year now and even with the 10 different content categories I have, there are ideas that I still haven’t explored here. Bonus Stuff is an umbrella column that will house these ideas moving forward.
You can check out the albums on all platforms using the embedded links on the titles.
Grief is a subject that is quite dear to my heart, especially among Christians. At different points in our lives, we go through seasons of loss, tragedy and pain. It’s an emotional state that every human can connect with on some level and being believers does not exempt us from this.
Art is one of the significant outlets by which people cope with grief, and music particularly occupies a special seat at that table. Many chart-topping secular albums have been born from seasons of pain and suffering that the artists have had to pass through. Still, sometimes it feels like grief is often avoided in popular Christian music.
Being a student of the Bible, I find myself drawn to the Psalms of lament in scripture as strongly as I am drawn to the Psalms of praise. I’ve studied enough to know that Godly sorrow as a concept is theologically sound and to understand that God has something to say to us and through us in all the seasons of our lives — both the good and the ugly.
Today we will be checking out some concept albums and an EP that explore grief.
A Hole In The World - Amanda Opelt (2022)
Singer-Songwriter, Folk
This EP is a companion piece to a book of the same name, A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing written by Amanda Opelt. It was born from a season of overwhelming personal loss in Amanda’s life which included three miscarriages and the hospitalization and eventual death of her older sister, Rachel Held Evans. It’s visceral and poignant yet somehow filled with hope.
Excerpt From the lyrics of Oh Body:
Breathe oh body, just breatheSadness suffocates you, batters and berates you
Eat oh body, just eat
Grief will try and starve you, hollow out and scar you
Oh body, broken, I will care for you
Oh cross of sorrow, I will carry you
Drink oh body, just drink
Cause fear is overflowing, there's a desert where you're going
Move oh body, just move
You're tender to the touch now, love will lead you somehow
Oh body, broken, I will care for you
Oh cross of sorrow, I will carry you
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