TobyMac, a contemporary Christian music singer, turned to songwriting after the terrible death of his 21-year-old son, who died in October 2019 from an unintentional drug overdose, to make sense of the tragedy.
TobyMac's seventh studio album, "Life After Death," to be released on Friday (August 19) on Forefront/Capitol Christian Music Group, is a brutally honest examination of the sadness that followed Truett Foster McKeehan's death.
"I immediately went to write, because that's what I know to do when I'm in so much pain," the seven-time Grammy winner revealed to Billboard. "You go to [write] what you know, what you love and what brings you peace. I immediately started writing - and I wrote '21 Years.' Then I wrote a song called 'Faithfully,' and I wrote 'Everything About You' in the first few months after Truett passed."
Not surprisingly, this is TobyMac's most personal album ever. Grief can make everything personal, especially one's artistic endeavours.
"I know that people say, 'My songs come from my journals,' and I can't claim that too much in the past - but this time I can," he shared.
"It really is my journey put to music over the last two years that includes every emotion. It's a very honest record. I've had people text me [about] 'Everything About You' with my 20-year old daughter Marlee, and they're like, 'I listened to that song once and I'll never listen to it again because I can't take it.' I know there's songs like that that people just don't want to listen to over and over, I know that sort of goes against everything you think as a pop-writing musician, but this is just a really honest look at my journey - a man that has literally experienced the good, bad and the ugly over the last two-and-a-half years," he recounted.
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TobyMac acknowledges that as difficult as some of the songs may be to listen to, promoting them is equally challenging.
It's not just the usual promoting. Doing so every chance he gets means remembering the fact that he lost a child. He added that he's not the one to do interviews for the sake of doing them, so each time he spoke of the album means allowing himself to feel the sadness and loneliness once more.
He added however that as painful as the whole process of writing and releasing this new music, this does not alter my conviction that music may serve as medicine and therapy for individuals. He added he always has hope that things will turn around.
The death of the 21-year-old son of Christian rapper TobyMac at a Nashville home in October 2019 was ultimately ruled in 20202 as an accidental overdose of fentanyl and amphetamines.
Truett Foster McKeehan died as a result of "acute combined drug intoxication." McKeehan had marijuana and Adderall in his system, autopsy and toxicology results showed, as The Tennessean reported.
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