JesusfreakHideout.com: Highlighting 2014 Part One -- Looking Ahead To New Music In The First Half of 2014

For our 8th annual Highlighting feature, we split the year into TWO pieces -- January to June and July to December. Each list contains 15 artists/releases for a total of 30 in total for 2014. So, without further ado, we give you Highlighting First-Half 2014!

5 of 15

#5. Jason Gray
Love Will Have the Final Word

Release Date: March 4, 2014

Jason Gray has become one of my favorite songwriters, one of the few lyricists today with that special knack for marrying vulnerable truth and theological depth with accessible yet intelligent pop sensibilities, and for that, the CCM world is lucky to have him. Love Will Have the Final Word takes that signature style and gives it an interesting twist with the addition of Cason Cooley to the production team. It's been a long road to release day for this record, but that should make it all the better.
- Jen Rose

Once called Christian music's best kept secret, Gray's last two full-length efforts, 2009's curiously-titled Everything Sad is Coming Untrue and 2011's A Way to See in the Dark, did much to relieve him of his unknown status and transport him squarely into the arena inhabited by like-minded semi-household names like Derek Webb and Andrew Peterson. Like few artists before, and certainly currently, Gray has been able to take radio-friendly pop songs and infuse them with a quirky, literate and altogether singular aesthetic that, if there were any justice in the world, would take every song he composes from this point forward and vault each of them straight into the number one slot on the charts the week they're released. Regardless of whether or not that unlikely scenario ever comes to pass, suffice it to say that both longtime listeners who latched onto Gray during his late-'90s indie period, and those who are just now coming to appreciate his truly unique and engaging talent, will more likely than not find plenty to love on his upcoming record.
- Bert Gangl

Jason Gray is a man of great depth who can also write a jangly hook with the best of them. Lead single "With Every Act Of Love" is a poppy delight that also digs a little deeper and features the fantastic lyric, "God put a million doors in this world for his love to walk through / one of those doors is you."
- Alex "Tincan" Caldwell

As far as thoughtful pop music goes in Christian music, Jason Gray is among the cream of the crop. Even his album titles make a statement, and the emphatic Love Will Have The Final Word is no different. Even now, I still feel that Gray has only touched the surface of his potential, a thought as exciting as any.
- Mark Rice

Gray is a brilliant songwriter who ministers through music because he weaves so much of his own heart - with its wounds and its joy - into his music. I look forward to every new Jason Gray album because I know the great effort he's taken to mold it into something beautiful.
- Mark Geil

Visit our Jason Gray page for more information about them...