This Changes Everything - Review

Our look at Lou Fellingham's new solo album, This Changes Everything, which was recorded live in Brighton.

What changes everything?

The answer isn’t given until the very end of Phatfish alumni Lou Fellingham’s homecoming live album, but along the way the effect of God’s power and faithfulness is explored in songs tailor-made for Sunday morning services.

Setting out a heart of simple praise, Praise the Name of Jesus is a short single verse and chorus of 8 lines which repeats what Lou, the band, and the audience are gathered in Brighton to do that night: to praise Jesus. Not to see a show, not to discover some deep, internal truths, or to solely have a good time. From the first synth notes to last belting chorus, praising is all that is on the agenda.

Praise and nothing more.

Each of This Changes Everything’s 13 songs are exactly what you would expect from Lou Fellingham. Powerful, simple-to-pick-up, and motivated by a heart in love with God. Live, this album carries the atmosphere of the most passionate of worship services because it knows that community is a fundamental aspect of worship. It celebrates coming together in praise.

But that doesn’t stop this being a deeply personal expression either. What’s more personal than going back to your home, your roots?

This Changes Everything does begin with ‘we’, but throughout it moves into ‘I’ into a deeply personal place of worship. Lord I Need You comes band in the middle of the album, and is an emotionally naked surrender to God. In it Lou sings not only of needing God to bring wholeness, cleanliness, and strength against sin, but also needing God as sole hope in life. This is also picked up on Sweet Surrender, Christ in Me, and the moving How Great the Name of Jesus.

All that Jesus did is sung of with love and praise. But it doesn’t stop there.

All of the album, the communal and the personal, are brought together in rousing chorus with This Changes Everything.

Before I asked of the title ‘What Changes Everything?’.

I was wrong.

It isn’t what changes everything, but for whom. This Changes Everything shouts that Jesus’ death and resurrection isn’t just hope for any single group or person (as opposed to God’s promise for Israelites in the Old Testament) - but is for everything. This may seem like nothing new, this gift for all people, but Lou Fellingham has gone one step further. She illuminated how wide-reaching, how all-encompassing this gift is by uniting personal praise and gathered worship into one, single voice. This Changes Everything isn’t just for me, or for you:

‘This changes everything

Everything for us’.

This Changes Everything is Lou Felingham's first live solo album, recorded in Spring 2017, and is avaliable to buy here.