for KING & COUNTRY: 'Crave,' The Story Behind The Album

Luke, of for KING & COUNTRY, explained the inspiration for the duos most recent album 'Crave,' in anexclusive interview with Mstars/ Hallels. The album, released in February 2012, helped the brothers, Luke and Joel, to win the award for Breakthrough Artist of the Year at the first annual K-Love Fan Awards at the beginning of June.

"When Joel and I write music, our goal to be able to be real and authentic in all of the songs that we write. I always tell people it's like, if you were to take a year our of somebody's life, you know you have the ups and downs, you have the highs and lows, and those are the things that we write about," Luke said. "You're never really sure how it's going to connect with people, and one of the things that we hear the most of is, you know, 'hey, thank you for begin so honest through your lyrics and the songs on the album,' because we've got break-up songs on there, we've got songs that you could say define my wife, and then we finished dabbling with the song called 'Crave,' which is actually going to be our next single, which just simply says, 'hope is what we crave, and that will never ever change.'"

Their goal to remain genuine and authentic in their music results in a very diverse mixture of different types of songs. Some songs are slow and others are more upbeat, but they all tend to share a common theme. "I think that the actual heartbeat of it is that there is hope out in the world and that we all crave it as individuals," Luke said.

Luke said his favorite song on the new album is the title track, 'Crave.' It was one of the few songs that he has written on his own without the help of his brother, Joel. "I wrote it probably about 4 years ago and it was a pretty seemingly dark day that day and I went into the studio and I just kind of wrote the things that were on my heart. And I'm guessing that that day really felt like a hopeless day, and to be able to write about that and to be able to have a lot of people resonate with that has been a special thing," he said. "But yea, that song was a real heart cry for me."

Another song that the brothers feel very passionate about is the first song on the album 'Light It Up.' They wrote it for a friend of theirs who was struggling with depression in the hope that it would be encouraging and uplifting. "We actually took the opportunity to play it for him a couple of weeks later and we weren't sure how he was really going to take it, and we played it for him and it was his favorite song on the album. He was just like, 'yeah, I just love this song, I feel so connected to it,'"Luke said.

They were initially worried about telling him that they had written the song for him, but knew that they would have to do it eventually."Eventually we kind of got the courage up to tell him and when we did he actually just kind of was shocked and walked out of the room. And we kind of just, Joel and I looked at each other like, 'oh, wow, that didn't go exactly how we expected it to go.' And about 45 minutes later he called us and he said, 'Guys, I just wanted to say thank you so much for writing that song for me, you have no idea how much it helps me and how much it encourages me,'" Luke said. "I think it was at that time for both Joel and I that we realized the absolute power that music has and when you use the power of music and melody and lyrics with the power of the Gospel, something incredibly dynamic and powerful takes place."

A very popular song off of the new album, 'Proof Of Your Love,' was also made into a music video in September. The video is a very powerful illustration of one man (Joel) breaking away from a pack of unfeeling, unhearing and unspeaking people when he is moved by compassion after seeing a young boy fall down, hurt, in the line of marching people. The video was produced with the help of Luke and Joel's brother Ben, who works in video and film. "Really, the heartbeat of the music video and the illustration behind it is just, our culture is so incredibly powerful these days and it kind of locks us up, to kind of where our mouths our covered and our hands are tied together. And sometimes it takes an act of goodness to kind of break down those walls and the film is kind of about one person realizing, 'Hey you know what, I don't have to live life like they're telling me to,' you know, 'I don't have to live life the same way everybody else that goes before me lives it,'" Luke said.

The duo plans on continuing to write music and create songs that is both honest and authentic. They have performances at various festivals set up for the summer and in the fall they will be touring with Newsboys. After that, they have a Christmas tour planned with Big Daddy Weave and Meredith Andrews. "We just try to walk out and be faithful with opportunities that we're given and, honestly, it's kind of cool because I kind of feel like we're along for the ride," Luke said.

Tags : For King & Country 'Crave' 'Proof Of Your Love'