Contemporary Christian music

In August 2022, Contemporary Christian Music mainstay TobyMac issued a project, Life After Death, that found the singer-songwriter wrestling with the emotional turmoil that followed the death of his 21-year-old son, Truett, in 2019.

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Nearly three years removed from Life After Death, the 14-time Billboard Christian Airplay solo chart-topper returns with his ninth solo studio album, Heaven on My Mind, on Friday (March 7) via Forefront/Capitol Christian Music Group. The new album finds him discovering a new equilibrium, while continuing to honor the sense of loss.

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“My last record was just facing things no one should have to face… the deepest, heart-crushing you could ever have in losing my first-born son, but I felt like this record was me gaining my footing a bit. Realizing, ‘Okay, I can breathe, and I can get my fist up in the air about things I believe in,’” the seven-time Grammy winner tells Billboard.

As with Life After Death, TobyMac turned to songwriting as an outlet to process this new life season, saying, “I’m a songwriter first and foremost. I’m a songwriter disguised as a pop artist.”

The album’s central theme is perhaps embodied in his uplifting, most recent Christian Airplay chart-topper “Nothin’ Sweeter.”

“I wanted to summarize a little bit that life is full of twists and turns and that I have seen a lot of it, and I’ve seen the sweetest parts of it, the best parts of it, and I’ve seen some really tough parts, and I landed on my feet was the goodness of God.”

TobyMac has weathered a few heartbreaking moments in recent years — not only the passing of his son, but the death of close friend and longtime associate Gabriel Patillo, who died in April 2024 following a battle with cancer. Patillo was a member of TobyMac’s Diverse City Band and an entertainer who had worked alongside TobyMac for 25 years, after first joining as a dancer when TobyMac was part of DC Talk.

He pays homage to Patillo on a pair of songs on the album: the folk-oriented “Campfire (That Very Love)” was written as a plea of healing, followed by the tender tribute “Goodbye (For Gabe).”

“Gabe was the heartbeat of Diverse City. We did everything together,” TobyMac recalls. “The backstage culture that we were always striving to create on our tours, Gabe and I came up with that together — how do we make backstage not competitive? How do we make it a community? How do we make it to where we’re praying for each other, hoping for each other, and cheering for each other when we’re on stage versus feeling competitive? My philosophy is that a healthy [environment] backstage leads to a healthy [environment] on stage. It made the shows stronger, more powerful. We produced every show together, wrote songs together, and he helped me think through everything. He was just my right-hand man for everything that I do.”

Determination and a refusal to lose hope pulsate through the album on songs such as the resolute anthem “Can’t Stop Me” (which feels reminiscent of TobyMac’s days as part of the 1990s CCM rock/rap group DC Talk) and the triumphant “God Did It.” Elsewhere, on “A Lil Church (Nobody’s Too Lost),” which is rising on the Hot Christian Songs chart, he seeks to redefine boxed-in assumptions of what a church can be—focusing more on community over stained-glass windows and towering buildings.

He initially had a current country music hitmaker in mind for “A Lil’ Church.” “I had Jelly Roll in my head, just because we’ve texted a bit here and there. I always wanted to hear him on it, maybe one day I will. That would be awesome,” TobyMac says.

“Rearview,” featuring Gospel artist-writer-producer Juan Winans, touches on coping with regrets.

“Juan wrote his verse, and I wrote mine,” he recalls. “We wanted to write it authentically so we each took a verse. I think regret is something that I struggle with. I look back like, ‘Should I have done this differently? Should I have done that differently?’ it can really imprison you. I tried to look into the things that trouble me, [and] into the things that empower me or make me feel like I can overcome.”

Outside of his work as an arena-headlining artist, TobyMac was part of the team that launched Gotee Records in 1994, developing it into a prominent label home, with a current roster that includes not only Terrian, but also Jon Reddick, Cochren & Co. and more. The label was recently acquired by global company Bell Partners.

“Partnering with a bigger company, we can put twice the power behind our artists,” TobyMac says. “I’m still doing A&R, still developing artists for Gotee. I made sure I could still do that. As a guy that’s had a label for 25 years, if I didn’t think this would serve our artistry in a greater way, there’s no way I would have done it. It’s nice to know that we have a partner where anything we dream of, we can go after it.”

While Contemporary Christian Music is growing domestically, the deal with Bell brings with it the benefit that it “is powerful in other parts of the world where it’s tough for us to get there and to be represented well,” he says. “I’m excited about the growth of our industry internationally. I feel like it’s absolutely moving in the right direction, and I look forward to what we can do with Bell.”

Gotee recording artist and former Diverse City bandmember Terrian, who released her own debut album in 2024, joins on “Resist (Keep the Devil Away).” Terrian is also opening shows on TobyMac’s current Hits Deep Tour.

“When we signed Terrian to a record deal, we started making songs on her right away and she started touring with Diverse City,” TobyMac says. “The plan was always for her to fly and do her own thing. This is the first tour I’ve done right now without Terrian in the band and she’s out there opening shows because I’m super proud of her and want to give her all the help I can to increase the foundation of what she’s doing as an artist. I love developing young artists, walking alongside them, and helping them gain their own vision for their artistry.”

His album finds its center in creating music of a scope both deeply personal and universal.

“I call it the good, the bad, the ugly of my life. Those just end up on the pages of my lyric notebook,” he says. “We’re all facing some relationships going great, and some relationships that are struggling and there are deep valleys. If I write from my life and I’m experiencing all those things, I find that people relate to it. It resonates with people because we’re not that different from each other.”