For King + Country’s Joel and Luke Smallbone Asks What Are We Waiting For? with New Album
Brothers Gear Up for 34-City Tour Kicking off March 31st
Over the course of their first three studio albums, For King + Country’s Joel and Luke Smallbone have earned a reputation as modern-day poets skilled at capturing the complexities of life, love and faith in engaging pop songs. The time afforded artists during the pandemic upped the ante for creative expression and the brothers deliver their most compelling collection of songs yet with What Are We Waiting For?
“This is our fourth studio album now, setting aside the Christmas album we did the year before last, and we found ourselves in a very interesting situation due to the pandemic,” Joel tells SLN. “We were home for all of last year. Every other time, we’ve been in tour buses, back lounges and dressing rooms recording and writing, but what this period of time afforded us was a real deep intensive focus, which actually was very appropriate for what this record represents as far as what we just walked through, our universal suffering. Where we can go from here? That’s really the quandary of the record: ‘What are we waiting for as we begin diving into this new future after we’ve been put on pause globally for such a long time?’”
What Are We Waiting For? is the latest creative tour de force from the successful duo who has earned a broad fan base encompassing country, pop and Christian music aficionados. They have won four Grammy Awards, seven Dove Awards, one Billboard Music Award, 13 K-Love Fan awards and have scored nine No. 1 songs. They’ve enjoyed 1.8 billion career streams and have collaborated with a diverse array of artists including Dolly Parton, Timbaland and NEEDTOBREATHE.
The songs on their new collection cover a wide expanse of emotional territory from their loving homage to their parents in “Unsung Hero” to the comforting message of “God is With Us,” the current single at Christian radio, to the unifying anthem “Together,” featuring Kirk Franklin and Tori Kelly, which has already been a No. 1 hit. The album also features guest appearance from Dante Bowe on “Unity” and Sleeping at Last on “Harmony.”
The siblings admit it took them a while to settle on the album’s title. “If there was a lyric on the record that wasn’t scoured for an album title, that would be news to Joel and I,” Luke says, “because we went through everything to try to figure out what is the heartbeat? What is the lyric hidden in a song? What is the ultimate saying? We don’t have a song on the album called that, but yet that felt like the sum of all of the work. ‘What are we waiting for?’ is something that I think we’ve all had to ask ourselves. When you are sitting at a job in the pandemic you go, ‘Man, I’m contemplating a lot in life and this is not what I thought life was about.’ So you sit there and go, ‘I want to do it. I want to live. I want to dream and have adventure.’
“For all of us, ‘What are we waiting for?’ became something that we all subconsciously asked ourselves over the last couple of years and these songs are not about what took place during the pandemic, but they are about the lessons learned from the pandemic. I think we want to take those lessons learned into what some people call ‘a new normal.’ I don’t want to go back exactly to how things were because I think I’ve learned a lot of valuable things and this album is about taking what we’ve journeyed through into the future.”
So just what have the brothers learned during the pandemic? “First and foremost, we learned the beauty of stillness in a whole new way,” Joel shares. “Luke sort of became a hobby cattle farmer over the pandemic and obviously we went from full touring to being at home. While we were all worried, we all wondered how this was going to play out, there was a stillness that we were all forced to be invited into that I think changed us as men, as family men, as musicians. [It was] sort of a great intermission for For King + Country and I say that obviously with the utmost reverence and respect for the fact that that wasn’t the case for many. It was homeschooling when you never intended to homeschool. It was losing a loved one. It was challenging financially, but for us it was very still while we had a lot of those challenges… We learned on a global level. We learned on a family level and we learned on a spiritual level in a whole new way. This is our diary entry over the last year or so trying to pour into this new music what we came to grips with during such a time as this.”
During the past two difficult years, music became an even more coveted means of solace for everyone grappling with the tumultuous times. Did the brothers feel a responsibility to deliver songs that would nourish souls? “That is always the hope in music,” Luke says. “When I compare the need of music now versus maybe 10 years ago when we first released our record, people were still going through difficult things. People were still going through challenging moments, but I think that we’re now at a point where we are actually looking for answers more than we ever have in our lives. There are very difficult things to reconcile that are taking place and I believe it’s a poet’s job to articulate what another cannot. That’s what you do when you are writing these songs. You are articulating what somebody else is longing for or somebody is hoping for or how they are broken, and they don’t know why. There’s always a responsibility. . . That’s the privilege that we get. We get to be the soundtrack for these people’s moments. We do take it very, very seriously and I hope that we always do because music matters. Music connects people to people. It connects our souls.”
One of the highlights of the new album is the brothers’ sweet tribute to their parents “Unsung Hero.” “Luke had come into the studio that day and said, ‘I want to write a song about dad,’ and I said, ‘Well I don’t,’ to be fully candid, I said, ‘I want to write a song about mom,’ and so as one does in a duo, you compromise. We wrote a song about parents and about legacy and heritage. We are fortunate to have marvelous parents that immigrated from Australia to America and really taught us how to love a woman well, taught us how to love God well and others well. So this was just an opportunity for us to recognize obviously our parents, but parents in general and say, ‘Hey, job well done,’ particularly after the pandemic where almost every parent over the globe became a homeschool parent for a period of time. It’s been one of the sweetest songs that we’ve written.”
“Seasons” is a well-crafted song about enduring love that honors their wives. “It is really important when we talk about the infancy of love, new love, but in some cases, we forget the power of a steady love and a love that doesn’t change,” Luke says. “It gets better, and it only gets better when it is battle tested. It only gets better when you’ve gone through some difficult things. In ‘Seasons,’ the chorus finishes with ‘I’ll be yours through the seasons,’ and there’s something really freeing to be able to say to your spouse, ‘Hey, you know what I didn’t do well today or I didn’t do x y z but I’m yours through this season.’ That’s what this song is speaking about.”
Just before the album’s release, the duo shot a video for “Broken Halo” in Eagle Mountain, CA at the same location director Christopher Nolan shot the climactic scene in the 2020 film Tenet. “We love music videos, and we love collaborating with our brother Ben,” Joel says. “It is the most audacious music video we’ve ever attempted. There is going to be flying and levitating. Luke was very scared because he’s afraid of heights, but he did a great job! It was really fun to film.”
The brothers are looking forward to taking the new music on the road this spring. The tour kicks off March 31st in Southhaven, MS. “Dante [Bowe] is coming out to support and we’re really thrilled for him to be a part of the tour,” Luke says. “It’s been over three years since we released our last album, Burn The Ships. It’s time for new music and time to experience these new songs with people. We’re excited. The pandemic revealed to us what it looks like to slow down, what it looks like to take in the moments, and we’re going to be a little extra careful to enjoy the newness of a new tour, new music, new stories because you realize these moments don’t happen very often and I really want to soak this one in.”
The Smallbone brothers hope that in hearing What Are We Waiting For?, the listener will feel less lonely. “I hope that people take away that there’s a lot of other people going through very similar things,” Luke says. “I hope that they feel that they are a little less lonely in the world because they know somebody is going through very similar things. That’s what music has the ability to do. It has the ability to make people feel less lonely. I hope that people will ask the question, ‘What are they waiting for?’
“I hope that people realize that we’re given the gift of life, the world is given the gift to make choices,” he continues. “The question of ‘What am I waiting for?’ may mean so many different things and it’s not for me to answer, but I do hope that people are comforted by the songs that they hear, and I hope that people do have the sense of being known when they listen to these songs.”
