JFH News: Chris Renzema Releases First Single, "Mercy," From "Let The Ground Rest: B-Sides"

“NEW ARTIST OF THE YEAR” DOVE NOMINATED CHRIS RENZEMA RELEASES FIRST SINGLE, “MERCY,” FROM LET THE GROUND REST – B-SIDES

American Songwriter Premieres “Mercy,” Calls Song “Gorgeous Acoustic Elegy”

Let The Ground Rest – B-Sides Releases Jan. 8

NEWS SOURCE: Hoganson Media
September 18, 2020

Singer, songwriter and 2020 “New Artist of the Year” GMA Dove Award-nominated Chris Renzema releases “Mercy” today (Sept. 18). The never-before-released song was recorded live in the studio and will be featured on the Let The Ground Rest – B-Sides EP set to launch Jan. 8, 2021. Each B-Sides track is thematically connected to Renzema’s sophomore LP and Centricity Music debut, Let The Ground Rest, which launched to wide critical and fan acclaim April 24 followed by tens of millions of downloads and streams.

“At a time in political and cultural history when ‘The rejects, the drop outs / Those used to being passed by / The addicts, the burned out / Who’ve lost their way so many times’ seemed to get the short end of the stick, Nashville’s Chris Renzema opens his outstretched arms and welcomes those people in, as the lyrics to his new single ‘Mercy’ proclaim,” notes American Songwriter, who premiered the song this week, calling it a “gorgeous acoustic elegy” and relating Renzema’s “unassuming nature” to that “of a Heartland Ed Sheeran or a countrified David Gray.”

“Mercy” was written during a difficult season for Renzema that was fraught with so much anxiety and depression that it nearly left him paralyzed.

“I didn’t have a lot of direction or aim, and I felt kind of just out to sea,” confesses Renzema. “There were a lot of days where I would sleep through the morning after staying up really late. My schedule was just a mess. When I read that verse that says His mercies are new every morning, I remember thinking, well, I just slept through my whole morning.

“The chorus of ‘Mercy’ comes from a place where the semantics are not really what matters in the declaration from the Lord,” continues Renzema, analyzing Lamentations 3:23. “It’s the fact that His mercy is constantly finding us even if your morning is 1:00 pm or 6:00 am after being up all night with an anxiety attack.”

‘Cause His mercy’s new with the morning

Even when you can’t sleep at night

And if you’re too anxious to notice

He’ll hold your hand while you cry

(“Mercy” chorus lyrics)

Like the B-Sides EP, the heartbeat behind the whole Let The Ground Rest LP “is the idea that growth comes from periods of rest, of barrenness,” shares Renzema. “It’s a process to exist, to learn and understand God’s love. While His love is not seasonal, we go through seasons as we understand and experience it.”

Logging more than 8.75 million streams across multiple platforms in its first week at retail and streaming outlets, Let The Ground Rest caused Jesusfreakhideout.com to label Renzema “one of the best-kept secrets of the independent music scene” while NewReleaseToday.com says the recording “speaks to hope” in this season the world is in. In between the opening and closing tracks, Renzema shares real-life, hopeful messages along with worship in singles like “17” and “Better.” The latter song was written “as a sort of ‘get well soon’ card to the world, having no idea I’d be releasing it during a worldwide pandemic.”

With authentic artistry that continues to resonate with an ever-growing audience, all the latest Chris Renzema tour, music and more news can be found at http://chrisrenzema.com/, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Spotify (874,000 monthly listeners) and Apple Music.

About Chris Renzema:

Shifting seamlessly from indie rock to folk worship to Americana, Renzema’s voice and lyrics cut to the bone singing about hope and echoing the universality of both pain and praise. With more than 36 million audio streams of his first album, I’ll Be The Branches, over one million Spotify track saves over the last 12 months and Pandora naming him a 2020 “Artist to Watch,” Renzema’s groundswell continues to build, all organically. “The music we’re making isn’t being engineered to hit any playlists or radio or anything like that,” says Renzema. “The strategy is to let it hit the people that want it already and let that inform where it’s going. We’re taking the toolbox we have and refining it, not adjusting or changing or moving it.”

About Centricity Music:

Centricity is an independent Christian music company based in Franklin, TN. Founded in 2005 with a commitment to artist development and stylistic diversity, its artist roster includes Andrew Peterson, Apollo LTD, Caitie Hurst, Chris Renzema, Coby James, Jason Gray, Jonny Diaz, Jordan Feliz, Lauren Daigle, Neon Feather, North Point Worship, PEABOD and Unspoken. Providing label and publishing services, Centricity is a family-owned organization, and they like it that way. The committed work of its staff and artists has yielded successes such as Grammy Awards, Billboard Awards, Dove Awards, K-Love Fan Awards, and multiple Gold and Platinum Albums and Singles. For more information on Centricity Music, visit www.centricitymusic.com.

###

For more info on Chris Renzema, visit the JFH Artists Database.