A new album by Grammy-nominated artist Danny Gokey includes his usual upbeat, hope-filled songs but also includes a track that warns about the deceptive nature of evil and urges the church to “wake up” to the lies society has embraced. “Evil is dressing up to fool the people,” Gokey told Crosswalk Headlines.
The 11-song LP, Sound of Heaven, releases July 26 and is Gokey’s fifth studio album with a mixture of worship, pop, and Latin sounds. One song from that album, I Got You, is currently on the Billboard Christian Airplay chart.
Another song, Makeup, addresses what Gokey calls “hard truths” by comparing the devil’s deception to cosmetics on a face. “Wake up/I think the devil’s trying to play us/he’s mesmerized us with the makeup/but it’s made up/open your eyes, stop buying all the lies.”
The song seems to tackle a host of hot-button cultural issues without being specific: “We go with the lie because we’re too afraid to speak up when you’re near the ledge/because gravity, it don’t change/and your truth won’t change a thing/you’ll find out walking off the edge.”
Gokey told Crosswalk Headlines he felt led to write a song warning the church addressing the culture’s demise.
“The enemy makes bad things look good,” Gokey said. “And if we’re not discerning, and we’re not paying attention, and we’re not reading our Scriptures, we can fall into the bait.
“Proverbs talks about the harlot, who says, ‘My husband is traveling, he’s taken a purse full of money, he’ll be gone, I’ve made my bed, come with me [and] lie, let’s fulfill our pleasures.’ And [it] says, little did he know that it was like a bull to the slaughter. Just because something feels good [and] it looks good -- we sometimes don’t see the hook that’s destroying us from the inside out. And that’s what that song is talking about. And I wanted to address it because our culture is declining.”
The song urges Christians to defend God’s Word: “Tell the truth, even if it hurts, because that’s what love would love.” It warns individuals who are caught in sin: “Satan won’t tell you how the party ends/until you’re too far in.”
“Not everything is as it looks or seems,” Gokey told Crosswalk Headlines. “There’s things that are traps, and there’s bait that is trying to trick us. When the fish takes the bait, it looks tantalizing to see that worm or the minnow. It’s like, ‘That looks good.’ But many times, we don’t see the hook in the thing that looks attractive and tantalizing.”
It’s not the first time Gokey has spoken up about the culture. Last year, Gokey released a patriotic-themed EP, Brave, that included songs celebrating America.
“I love my country,” he said. Gokey encourages Americans discouraged about division to focus instead on the good in America’s history. He compared it to a marriage that is falling apart but is healed when the couple reconnect and “remember what brought us together.”
“That is where healing starts,” he said.
WATCH: Danny Gokey - I Got You (Official Music Video)
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Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.