Embracing “The Sound Of Heaven”
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It's time to take the quiz. Five questions, five minutes a day, five days a week. Take the quiz every weekday at thequiz.fox and then listen to the quiz podcast to find out how you did. Play, share, and of course listen to the quiz at thequiz.fox. It's Live in the Bream with the host of Fox News Sunday, Shannon Bream. This week on Live in the Bream, we have got a Grammy-nominated artist you will know for a lot of different things, but

He was a top finisher on American Idol. My opinion, should have won that year, but whatever. He's gone on to do amazing things, had number one hits. He is involved in all kinds of different things. We'll try to get to as many as we can, but he's got a brand new album called Sound of Heaven. Danny Gokey, welcome to Live in the Bream. Hey, Shannon. Thank you for having me. Okay, so let's start there. What is this Sound of Heaven? What was this album all about?

Well, you know, I think this album, for me, it represents, you know, the different sides of me. You know, heaven is not just one sound, right? Heaven, the Bible talks about in Revelation how people from every nation, every tribe, every tongue,

is going to be around the throne and so one of the things that i think about from just the way that i grew up is that um i was surrounded by so many different sounds worship you know r&b you know my parents with you know soul music and then gospel music and and then meeting my you know my first girlfriend who was latina which is you know spanish culture and so um

The sound of heaven just encapsulates that because heaven is more than just one sound. It's diverse, but it's a party that everybody's invited to. And that's really what I wanted to make clear on the Sound of Heaven album that like, hey, there's something for everybody and everybody is invited to this party.

Well, yeah, you can hear all of those influences on this record. Do we say record? I'm older than you, but I remember this project. Yeah, that's the industry term is records. We still call them records. Oh, see? All right. Yes, I'm an industry insider. So it's a record. But you can hear all of those different flavors and influences in your music and definitely on this album as well. Album, record, project? Yeah.

How do you begin the process of writing? Do you collaborate? Do you sing other people's songs? How do you decide what's going to go on an album like this and what the message, how it all works together collaboratively? This project was really unique, right? Because as it turns out, it's the reflection of all the different sides of me. It's, you know, very celebratory. But when I started, it starts with a prayer.

And it starts with a prayer like, Lord, what do you want to write through me? Because God is the greatest songwriter of all time. You know, he's the greatest artist of all time. And so we're his children. So I'm thinking like, I'm going right to the source. So I start with a prayer and I start paying attention. I start paying attention to phrases, to different melodies, to

And that's what I did with this album. I started with just starting with the first song. And then I started noticing as I went from the first song, the second song, the third song, how diverse the album was.

becoming a B. And I'm thinking in my head, all right, this is a diverse album. Our world is structured in such a way where we have country radio, Christian radio, pop radio, rock and roll radio, R&B radio, rap, you know, hip hop. And I'm like, so how can I fit this all under one umbrella? And so I began to just kind of dig into that. And as I'm writing these songs and I'm getting these different themes and these different sounds,

I started getting a little concerned, like, Lord, how do I get this all in one umbrella to make sense, right? And I love one of the missing pieces that I wrote towards the end was called Sound of Heaven, or maybe middle of the project, was the actual song Sound of Heaven. And I was like, ah, this makes total sense. Just that title itself. Now, the song is just talking about how, you know, the sounds of this world is bringing us down, right? Makes me want to stay in bed.

And it's just talking about, but I can hear the sound of heaven. Never heard a better melody. I can hear the sound of heaven. Oh, and it sounds like joy to me.

trading my pain for a new perspective, trading my worry for a song. You know, it's one of those things where it not just encapsulated just a theme of what I wanted to share, an exciting theme, but sound of heaven. I knew that heaven was so diverse and heaven is reflected with different sounds. So it all just came together. I hope that made sense. It's a big explanation, but it really tied the record together for me on many different levels. Yeah. And folks will know the song that's out there now, I Got You.

Yeah, I mean, that's that's all over the airwaves. And that is such it's one of those things that it's so encouraging, which I think people need encouragement right now. But there's so much of that on this record. But that song for sure is one of those ones that I think has got to hit people wherever they are driving in the car or, you know, trying to get the kids to bed or whatever it is. And you hear the song that's like, oh, there's a lot of encouragement packed in one song.

Yeah, it's one of those songs to remind you, as long as we have God, as long as we have Jesus, as long as I got you, like I can get through any situation. You know, the writer, one of the writers that I wrote that song with, we were sitting down, it was a writer's camp that we're having here in Nashville. And she began to open up, it was me and another writer and then her. She began to open up about how her daughter was at the Covenant school when the shooting occurred. And how like it freaked her out that she was,

You know, it's a nail-biting, terrifying experience to know that there's a live shooter in your child's school, and you're helpless and you can do nothing. So she had a first cling on to God with all her heart. You know, she was fortunate where her daughter survived, wasn't one of the victims of the Covenant shooting, school shooting. But, you know, even though she was able to rejoice, what about those, though, who lost their children? She had one of the school leaders lost their child.

And she began to talk about the funeral that I think it was the schoolmaster, the principal or the pastor lost. They lost their child. And at the funeral, how he just kept saying, you know, this is not going to stop our mission. We're going to even talk about the gospel more because the gospel has helped my daughters with Jesus. And we, you know, as we're writing that song, we can only attribute that because he had King Jesus. He knew he'd be reunited with his daughter.

He knew. And it's the same thing with Joseph when he's being thrown into prison and he's ripped away from his family and he's lied on. Same thing with Job when everything is taken away from his family. And then how do you survive that? You hang on to your faith. You hang on to God, even when it feels like God has let go of you. And that's how you survive. And you come out shiny, stronger, better, and more powerful than ever. We'll have more Live in the Bream in a moment.

From the Fox News Podcast Network. Hey there, it's me, Kennedy. Make sure to check out my podcast, Kennedy Saves the World. It is five days a week, every week. Download and listen at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Again, we're talking to Danny Gokey. His brand new album is Sound of Heaven. I got to ask you about your family because for people who are on the gram and they're following Lea Setkokey, they're very entertained. Yeah.

They sure are. She's always having a good time. Do you plan and participate in these videos? Does she catch you off guard? Many of them seem to be. I mean, you guys are very transparent and it's a beautiful thing putting your family out there. Yeah, we are very. She is. Nothing is planned. Everything is. I should say nothing. Ninety five percent of the videos are not planned. If there's one that I think is funny, I'll participate in.

But a lot of times she's, you know, throwing me. You're dragged in before you have a chance. Yeah, dragged in. And don't even know what's going on. I'm getting caught with the camera in my face. And I know I'm like, what's going on? I have to just try to get my my response, you know. Mm hmm.

Well, it's a lot of fun for those who are watching. And some of these I'm watching, I'm thinking, I'm not sure if they had a chat after that about what went down there. You guys do talk about food a lot, too. And you travel. And I like that that you guys let us see what you're eating. And it's good stuff.

Yeah, we love food. Lea Set, my wife, is a very, very good cook. She can – man, she's an amazing cook. But we also love experiencing food. And so we – when we travel, we're always looking for unique and different places to go to so that we can just enjoy food.

Enjoy the different things like I personally like, you know, talk about this record sound of heaven how it's diverse and how heaven is diverse and it's You know it we might the palette and her palette is the same way super Diverse and I think that's what makes our country so special. Mm-hmm. Our country is a melting pot You know, you have people who are trying to stoke the fires of division, right? That's always

That's always like the plan of people who want to divide, conquer and destroy. But man, how boring would food be if there's only, you know, one type of food or how boring would culture be if there's only one type of person? I mean, I just think the diversity is what we celebrate. I just love it all. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, even just like I said, I mean, there's all of the different influences through her family and through her cooking and through all of those things. It does make life more interesting. And this country is very unique and special in that way, in that we're built on all kinds of different cultures and all kinds of different people and the churches, too. And, you know, we're supposed to joy in that. Like we're all parts of the body of Christ.

We all have different giftings and different callings. And we work together. If we were all ears or we were all hands or whatever it is, I mean, we wouldn't get things done. I mean, we've got to be diverse and embrace that. Yeah, we definitely need to be diverse. And I think that's the unfortunate side is that our thinking becomes small when we don't embrace diversity.

you know, everything that's around us. We become very, you know, small-minded, unfortunately, which is, you know, I think that's too, I just think when people get to heaven, they're just going to be shocked, you know, at how amazing and how diverse and how awesome. I mean, you know, talk about just the food thing. I just love, love diverse food, love cultural food, love food from different countries. And man, I can't, the thousand year feast in heaven is about to go off. I'll tell you that.

It's going to be a party. I can't wait. I can't wait. Um, but you mentioned the traveling and we talk about your family a little bit. You've got four kiddos who are also hilarious and often show up on the gram. Um, but, but like I said, has talked about, listen, we travel with them. They're pretty good travelers because these are pretty good kids. Um,

And I feel like I don't know anything about parenting because I don't have kids. So I shall not weigh in on that. But it seemed like there are all kinds of different parenting styles. And I know your kids aren't perfect all the time, but it seems like you guys have had real success. Is that the two of you kind of being in agreement with the way you want to raise the kids? Is it, you know, boundaries? What's going on there? Because they really seem like great kids.

Yeah, our kids, I think there's different sides. Like, you know, you first have compliant kids, which is in their nature to be compliant. Then you have challenging or challengers. So we have we have mostly compliant, you know, one or two challenge, you know, challengers. But I think the disposition of the kid really helps. I think as far as our kids.

parenting style, I got to give to my wife. She's harder on them than I am in a good way. You know, kids need discipline and structure and order. And she's so good at that.

Where sometimes that's, but in the other areas, like I'm really good. There's other sides that I pick up that she's not so good at, you know, like my wife, it's weird. I'm the artist in the family. So, and she's more of the analytical thinker. So we almost have like an opposite, you know, the stereotypes, men are not emotional. Women are emotional. My wife was less emotional. I'm more, yeah, we're flipped. I'm more emotional. She's more logic. And, um, you know, because it's the artist brain to me. Right.

But I think that plays on each other really nicely. We've had our talks. Unfortunately, I wish I could say it was all glitter and gold, but it's not. We've had some talks where

We have to say, hey, we got to get on the same page with this because this is affecting our children. And they're seeing the division between us and our disciplinarian actions. And it's giving mixed signals. And so those are not the fun times. But we've weathered the storm and we're still learning and still growing. I think the biggest thing that as me and her grow is that we both remain humble towards each other and keep humility. Because humble people grow.

Prideful people, arrogant people, they don't grow. They come off and they give the thing that they know everything. And so there's no room to grow. You know, so I don't want to be that. And neither does she. Yeah. Well, yeah. And this morning I was reading in First Corinthians, I think it was 10. I'm studying through that right now. And when there was this whole thing about, oh,

Oh, be careful where you stand, lest you fall. You know, I think we're all of us that when you think you've arrived, that's a danger zone. That's a danger signal that we all always have improvement. And gosh, this side of heaven, we're not going to be anything near perfection or Christlike, although we're working towards that every day.

But there's always work to be done. And I think humility, like you talk about, it's so important in a marriage too. Just that we're seeking to meet each other's needs and to be each other's biggest cheerleader and to admit when we're wrong. Yeah.

My hubs, as you know, Sheldon, he'll always say he's the first person to say, I'm sorry. I will contest that because he's not here to fight for himself. But somebody's got to say sorry. So hopefully it's more evenly divided than he thinks it is. Okay, so this album, Sound of Heaven, is your fifth studio album. What does your family factor in? Do they add all to this process? Are any of them musical artists?

Yeah. So right now I've taken the lead in the family. This is one of the strengths I have is that I'm, I've been recently making the kids sing, even though they don't want to. Right. Because they all have great voices. And so, and they don't, you know, my, my daughter,

is the only one open to singing and writing music and so i'm getting it because i you know i want to push my kids in the right direction our job as parents is to detect the gifts in our children and begin to cultivate them right and not ignore them because my kids would rather just be on ipads and just in the pool so we kind of set up a system where i'm like all right if you want to be all right i need you to come over here we're going to sing for a little bit we're going to practice piano

for a little bit and then we're going to clean the house for a little bit. There's rewards that you get. But yeah, my kids are very musical. I want to push them at a young age though to develop that because for me it developed at a much later age. Okay. Well, I mean, I love that. Of course, they're going to be talented being around

this mom and dad and being in that house. I want to ask you too about the charitable work you do because you've got an organization, Better Than I Found It. What's that about? Yeah. So Better Than I Found It is we find the good, we shine the light, and we leave it better. What does that mean? Find the good. Find people who are out there just doing great work.

We shine the light. You know, I go, I get on my social media. We do, when we do these give backs, I begin to share with them, Hey, we're going to this city. I begin to tell the story. We get an Amazon wishlist going.

And the fans start buying what they need. But these amazing people who I call like the Mother Teresas and Martin Luther King Juniors and Bonhoeffers of their side of the world, you know, they're just making change. And we go in there and we find out what we need. We investigate what do they need that will help them keep going. So one of the givebacks we did, I think last month, I know I just did one last, actually last week I was doing a giveback. I'll share. We haven't aired this one. We filmed it.

But we're going to put it on social media. But this this beautiful organization that helps families who are struggling, who are living in hotels, who are, you know, living in tents and they're getting them into their own homes. They're getting them into like apartments and they're getting them on their feet and they furnish the home. So think about it. If you're immigrating over to this country and you're doing it the right way, but you don't have much.

But what they're going to do is that they're going to say, all right, we know that you got an apartment. We're going to go in there. We're going to furnish your apartment with – because you don't have anything. You're sleeping on the ground right now, right? So we found out – so they've been doing this and they've been – they're repurposing furniture in their warehouse. Furniture, that means a lot from other people. Maybe a grandparent passed away, but the furniture means a lot. So they're beautiful pieces. They'll just refurnish them and they're –

Give them pieces and people write stories and put them on the furniture, what this meant to them. And anyways, they needed a box truck to do deliveries. They were borrowing a box truck for the last four years they've been in service. And they've been, they've been just praying and believing that they'd get a box truck and started raising money for the last four years.

They raised a little bit of money. We were able to go locate a box truck and we were able to make up the difference. I think they'd raised like $15,000. What we did is we came up with another 20, I think $30,000. We wrapped, we wrapped the box truck with their logo and everything. And then we gave it to them as a surprise. So that's how we kept it going. We had a girl. Oh, it's, it's great. It's an, it's a, it's a TV show that I want to produce, you know, right now I'm just throwing it on my feed.

And I'm just saying, you know, because our idea is we want to redeem the feed. There's so much garbage on the feed. It's like, let's just redeem it with good stories. Like, for instance, we found this one girl. Yeah. We found this one girl who at 10 years old was going to, this is in Arkansas, who was going to senior centers with her mom because her mom would help take care of them at senior centers. And at 10 years old, she started asking these seniors, hey, if you could have anything, what would you want? She thought they would say millions of dollars, you know, some kind of car.

She found out that they just wanted their favorite type of candy. They wanted a pair of socks. So she started at 12 years old, an organization called Three Wishes. Her name is Ruby, for Ruby's residence. And she would go in and she would just ask them what three things they want. She'd go and get it for them. Well, it turned into a nonprofit. She's now 16 years old and she has a community center. So we found out.

that her roof was leaking on her community center. So we went and repaired her roof on her community center. When it would rain, they'd have to have 12 buckets of water all over the floor to catch it. And so we fixed the roof. Then we found out that the kitchen she was in was dilapidated. So we went and rebuilt her a brand new kitchen in her community center where she would cook meals and things for the elderly. And then we also surprised her with some wishes. We brought her a puppy because we found out her dog died two years ago.

So that one, I think that one is actually up on my feed if people want to look at that one. I think we put that one out already. But the story's up there. But we basically just ask people to help us. You know, we're a nonprofit organization. I started this with my wife's insurance policy years ago when she passed away. Sophia. Yeah, Sophia. We had dental and health benefits through her job.

And I didn't know there was a death stipend. And he gave me this check and I said, we're going to keep her legacy alive. So I took that little bit of money and I've turned it into a lot of help for a lot of people by the grace of God. But yeah, I love it. And in your feed, by the way, I follow you on Instagram. So I know you're probably everywhere. But you can see all of these things and hear these stories. So Danny, tell us the best place for everybody to find you and what you're up to and your new music.

Yeah. So you can follow me on all the social media platforms, but make sure there's a blue check mark by my name. It's usually just Danny Gokey or Danny Gokey official.

A lot of imposters out there, but they ain't us. Right, and they're going to ask for money. Danny Gokey's not going to ask you for money or your address. And they try to get people who are, you know, humanitarians and philanthropists because they know that we're looking to, you know, keep money flowing to our organizations to keep helping people out. So they really take advantage of that. But anyways, the music, you can hear, I got...

couple songs out now practice called sound of heaven but we released a song called wannabe todo el mundo which is a fun caribbean type summer song

I Got You and a new praise song called Open Up the Gates. And so but the rest of the album comes out June, excuse me, July 26. Sound of heaven. All right. We look forward to it. And Danny, thank you for all the goodness that you and your precious family are putting into the world and for making time for us on Live in the Dream. Great to hear from you. Thank you. Good talking to you. Listen ad free with the Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple podcasts and Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad free on the Amazon Music app.

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