Trees We'll Never See

Album: single release only (2023)
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Songfacts®:

  • After releasing "Say It With a Kiss" in February 2017, Amy Grant had a difficult few years. She underwent open-heart surgery in 2020 and was badly injured in a bicycle accident two years later.

    Grant returned to the studio in February 2023. She teamed up with songwriter and producer Marshall Altman, who also worked with her on her 2013 album, How Mercy Looks From Here, to collaborate on a track for Cory Asbury. The experience moved her so much that she and Altman started exchanging songs they had written.

    "I was so glad they waited for me to heal up and get back to the studio. Inspired by Cory's beautiful song, Altman and I started talking about songs that we've written recently that affected us," said Grant. "I played him one of mine. He played me one of his. His song was 'Trees We'll Never See.' I loved it immediately and asked him if I could record it, and within two weeks, both songs were mixed and mastered!"

    Grant released "Trees We'll Never See," her first new song in six years, on March 24, 2023, via Capitol Christian Music Group.
  • Altman wrote the song with session drummer Michael White in 2018. The song reflects Grant's worldview that we are all sons and daughters, mere ripples on the water striving to make a difference until it's time to go. Eventually, our names will be carved in stone and our souls sent home, but until then, we must pray for rain, pull up the weeds, and plant trees that we may never see.

    "I get choked up thinking about it," Grant told Billboard. "It just felt like I could have written it. It's so much how I see life … Everybody assumes I wrote it because it's the mantra I have lived by."
  • Grant now sees her life in its fourth quarter. "I was thinking about my mom and how she died at 80. If we're lucky we have four 20-year spans." she said, "I think the gift of fourth quarter is the perspective and awareness and the appreciation of all of it."

    "The first half of life you're so worried about measuring up," Grant continued. "They've got a better voice. I hope my songs don't sound stupid' - and then by the end, if you've opened up your own heart and mind to how loved everyone is, even people you don't care for, that's the gift of the last quarter."

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