The Best of 2024

A look at my three favorite new releases of the year by Joy Clark, Crystal Lewis and Shemekia Copeland

Hello friends,

I thought Saturday’s post on the 30th anniversaries of Albertina Walker’s Songs of the Church and Music City Mass Choir’s We’ve Come to Praise Him would be the last post of the year, but as I was working in the early hours of the morning (my favorite time of the day), I felt like this year certainly deserved some thoughts from a personal and musical standpoint.

2023 had been a hard year for me. There were a lot of personal and professional challenges that had left me a bit depleted and burned out. I was determined that 2024 was going to be different. I knew that I had to be willing to shape shift and find ways to not suffer to do my spiritual and musical work. Blessings come in unexpected packages and I was presented with a full-time job that had not been on my bucket list—but that turned out to be exactly what I needed.

Just as I was getting settled at the job, I took on two multi-disc projects with two different artists, both of whom were and are core influences. I was simultaneously in the midst of production on the Taana Gardner and Loleatta Holloway box sets for SoulMusic Records/Cherry Red Music. Learning a new job and completing intensive reissue projects was the perfect yin-yang. My needs were being met financially, spiritually and professionally.

During the pandemic, Bennie Diggs, founder of the New York Community Choir, and Estelle Brown of The Sweet Inspirations had shared Bishop William Morris O’Neil’s Spiritual Mind Treatment with me. And in 2024, it became a part of my daily practice. There were stressful, challenging, sometimes tearful days, but the Spiritual Mind Treatment and the music of O’Neil’s spiritual children sustained me. I began rendering the Spiritual Mind Treatment during my radio show so that others could begin to take in these words that had been restorative and brought focus to me.

In April, I released the twentieth anniversary edition of my own debut album, Love is on My Mind. My own musical career had been fraught thing for me, but I felt compelled to acknowledge and honor that moment in my life. Greg Hand beautifully remastered the album and Ray Curenton created a new cover for it. I found a video from my very first showcase in Nashville in January of 2004 singing “The Day You Held Me” with my spiritual sisters Nacole Rice and Selina Robb and it reminded me of the necessity of utilizing my own voice. Just a few weeks ago, I sojourned to Charlotte for a taping of a new web-series produced by Milik Kashad and had the opportunity to sing publicly for the first time in many years, paying homage to an artist whose music was transformational for me. I’m excited to share the results of that with you in 2025.

My most-played song of 2024 (according to Spotify AND YouTube) was Bruce Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams,” a song I wrote about in my birthday post in September. As we enter a new year that, for many of us, is filled with questions and uncertainty, I cling to this song that is essentially about the table that has room for everyone and is filled with mercy, compassion and love. It will probably be my most-played song in 2025 as well. If I’ve heard a song in recent years that most clearly articulates my ethos, it’s this one.

Was there new music that spoke to me?

My favorite ‘new’ album was folk/Americana artist Joy Clark’s Tell It To The Wind, produced by the great Margaret Becker. It’s an album that stretches what Americana can be, pulling on a range of American music, utilizing touching, introspective songs written by Clark and her co-writers. There’s a ethereal, romantic, hopeful tone to Clark’s songs that is refreshing in an era where jaded, compulsively depressive songs seem to be in vogue. I’ll take more of what she’s serving.

Listen to the entire album here.

Shemekia Copeland’s Blame It On Eve is also at the top of the list of new releases. This Grammy-nominated album (fingers crossed for a win in February!) is the latest in this great blues artist’s series of projects that deliver an intensive cultural and political critique with a spiritual foundation. It’s blues, it’s country, it’s gospel, it’s great. The writing is at times ironic, funny, sobering, and comforting. If you’re not familiar with Copeland’s work, it’s a great starting place.

Listen to the entire album here.

Crystal Lewis has been a favorite among lovers of CCM and gospel music for over three decades now. 2019’s Rhapsody was a bold departure for her from that world and a brilliant first step in her reinvention as a jazz chanteuse. This year saw the release of A Seasonal Thing, an album spilling over with warmth, color and wonder. Fusing standards with her own compositions, Lewis establishes that she’s a storyteller, in the vein of her jazz foremothers, who utilizes her voice to convey the array of emotions that undergird the songs she’s delivering. It’s too beautiful to just be digital! Vinyl, please!

Listen to the entire album here.

I’ll leave you with these three albums and a big thank you for your incredible support in 2024. God’s Music Is My Life is approaching 2000 subscribers, far more than I ever imagined would be interested in the cross-section of music that I cover. I’m grateful to each and every one of you. I’ll see you next year!

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