Bart Millard wasn’t expecting to cry the first time he heard “Oh Death.”
The MercyMe frontman was on the road to Texas, heading to be with his father-in-law, who had just been diagnosed with leukemia and given about a month to live. Somewhere along the drive, his phone buzzed with a text from Walker Hayes. Attached was a demo, just a chorus and an idea for a song Hayes had begun in a small country church.
“Walker said his original approach was, he was sitting in a little country church where he lives, and he said, ‘Man, the worship wasn’t great,’” Millard told The Christian Post. “And he goes, ‘I could either sit there and complain about it, or start thinking about what would I love to hear a church sing?’ And that’s where he got the idea.”
For Millard, the timing was uncanny. “He had no idea what I was going through, but it was like the perfect storm,” he said. “I was more emotional than usual, considering the circumstances, when I was driving, hearing this upbeat song, and, you know, I’m crying like I’m listening to ‘Imagine’ because of what’s going on.”
A month later, Millard’s father-in-law — a lifelong deacon, his second-grade Sunday school teacher, and a man who used to joke that while he couldn’t dance, he would “get down when I see Jesus” — passed away. Before he died, Millard made sure he heard the song.
“For me, it’s forever attached to my father-in-law,” the 52-year-old singer said. “If I would have thought years ago, ‘What’s the song I’ll connect with Frank, my father-in-law?’ it would have never been this song. But when the time came, it was so appropriate. The timing couldn’t have been [more] perfect. And it gives me a chance to talk about my father-in-law to a lot of people, which is pretty cool.”
Now, “Oh Death” is the lead single from Wonder & Awe, the band’s 12th studio album, and has already topped multiple Christian radio charts.
While the album carries moments of heaviness, the band says it is ultimately about joy and reclaiming a sense of awe in God that Millard fears is fading in the modern church.
“The concept is being caught by the wonder and awe of God, which sometimes feels lost,” he said. “That comes immediately with joy over what we’ve been given.”
Some tracks lean into whimsy, like “Fred Astaire” and “Canary in a Coal Mine,” which Millard half-jokingly called his “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” songs. Others, like “Heartbroken Hallelujah,” carry the weight of loss, written after a friend’s divorce.
For the first time in their three-decade career, MercyMe co-produced every track on a record — a shift the band says reshaped not only their sound, but their identity.
“Working with Ted T was always something that we wanted to do,” Millard said, referring to the veteran producer who helmed the project alongside the band. “He was open to letting us experiment quite a bit. We were in here making sounds with everything we could find. We were beating on the pianos in ways it’s not meant to be played.”
Band members joked about the unconventional recording process, including a “mouth trumpet,” “wood beams,” and other improvised percussion that made their way into the final tracks. They also credited Ted T for pushing them to dig deeper into unfinished ideas, refusing to let promising concepts go undeveloped.
“There were moments that Ted would hear something, like ‘Heartbroken Hallelujah’ wasn’t a complete song, it was just an idea, and he kind of stopped us and said, ‘I want to hear the rest of that story,’” Millard said. “It was refreshing to not only let us experiment sonically, but for him to be brave enough to say, ‘Hey, you guys aren’t done yet. This needs to be finished.’”
“Oh Death” was one of those moments. The song arrived late in the process, when the band was finalizing the album’s track list.
“We all instantly knew, ‘Oh, we have to stop and rethink everything, because this song needs to be finished,’” Millard said. “That doesn’t always happen, but you’re always looking for that moment on the record where there’s the linchpin — the song that becomes the heart of the whole record. ‘Oh Death’ was certainly that for us.”
Though the band has long been hands-on in production, they’d never formally credited themselves as co-producers until now. Ted T encouraged it.
“He was like, ‘You’ve done this for 30 years, you know what you’re doing, so let’s just do this together,’” Millard said. “It was a super fun process. We had a blast.”
MercyMe’s career has spanned 30 years, multiple platinum records, and one of the biggest crossover hits in Christian music history with “I Can Only Imagine,” which also inspired a film starring Dennis Quaid. A sequel focused on the group’s song “Even If” is in the works.
Their consistency in both craft and message is something Millard said he hopes will continue across the Christian music industry for decades to come.
“[I just hope] that it’s just done well,” he said. “Not necessarily well as in a certain style of music, but that it’s artists putting their best foot forward, doing it with integrity, maintaining the Gospel, and it being about Jesus and the Christian life and everything that involves.”
“I think the industry is in great shape,” he added. “There are so many great songs and great artists out there. Maybe it’s me, but I can’t keep up — there’s so many new artists introduced. I’m trying, but I’m so old, man. I can barely program my VCR. My kids keep telling me about all the cool stuff.”
In support of their new album, MercyMe is embarking on an eight-date stint this fall with fellow hitmakers TobyMac and Matthew West from Sept. 25 through Oct. 5.
And after three decades, the band says gratitude fuels their work more than ever. “We’ve said for 15 years we’re on borrowed time,” Millard said. “Whenever it stops being fun, we’ll stop. But for now, we’re still having a blast — and we’re incredibly grateful we get to do this.”
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com
