Charles Wesley Godwin on Weathering Tragedy and Hope on New Album ‘Christian Name’: ‘I’m Just Different Than I Was Before’
Categoria: Musica
On his new album, Godwin welcomes collaborators including Luke Combs and Wyatt Flores.
Por Billboard | 28/07/2026
When Charles Wesley Godwin sat down to co-write the song “Try Again” with fellow songwriter Travis Meadows (“Riser,” “What We Ain’t Got”) in late 2024, Godwin calls that writing appointment “the best therapy session you could ever ask for.” “Try Again” centers on finding the courage to face life open-heartedly and faith-forward following sorrow and is a key track on Godwin’s newly released album Christian Name , which came out Friday (July 24) on Big Loud Records. That writing session also came not long after Godwin and his wife weathered tragedy when their third child, a son they named Samuel, was stillborn in August of that year. “I’m just different than I was before,” Godwin says of the nearly two years that have passed. “It’s made me much more empathetic as a person. Something like that really humbles you. I’m not saying I had my head in the clouds before, either, but something like that really brings you down to earth.” On previous albums like 2023’s Family Ties and 2019’s Seneca , Godwin did the bulk of the songwriting, but with Christian Name , he called upon several of Nashville’s top-tier writers and artists, including Meadows, Lori McKenna, Liz Rose, and Stephen Wilson Jr. “I think I needed help. I needed the help just to be upfront and honest,” Godwin says. “My co-writers for this album really helped me make a more balanced album, and I think it gave it some more hope. I think if I would’ve solo written this, it would’ve been a really hard listen and very depressing. I think it would’ve been a much harder listen.” Godwin began writing another track on the album, “Hey There, Son,” in 2019 as he and his family welcomed their first son Gabriel, but completed the song with McKenna in July 2024. Fellow singer-songwriter Wyatt Flores, 25, offers a guest vocal that gives the song an intergenerational feel of a son and father talking to each other over a lifespan. “He’s a friend of mine, and I think he started opening shows for me in 2023. Things have gone incredibly well for him and we play the same size rooms all around the country,” Godwin says of Flores. “He’s still very young and has a voice that has a bit more youthfulness to it than mine. I know it’s not the most traditional feature, but I thought it was about as impactful as a feature can be.” The album opens with an audio snippet from a fiery sermon from coal miner and preacher Dave Stacy; Godwin’s producer Al Torrence discovered a video clip of Stacy on YouTube. “Al knew that the [Biblical] book of Job had been something that was important to me these past couple of years, and he pulled that clip of Dave talking about the Book of Job for the intro,” Godwin says. “It was funny trying to get in touch with Dave to get permission to use it. He’s not online—that video was from someone who had videoed Dave, not his own YouTube channel or anything. I think the label was about to just send someone to Kentucky to see if we could find him, but the person who made the video wa