A musical collage, the front of CD cover keeps to Matt Maher’s concept with a ‘fly-posting’ of old tour posters, scribbled handwritten song lyrics and impromptu photos Matt, his fans and even his own wedding photos. But like his choice of tracks for this CD, no image is a random choice. Every picture and word is placed with purpose and very item has a story behind it because of the role it’s played in Matt’s song writing history of the past seven years.
“This record is a musical collage,” he says, “I think most of our lives look like that; this jumble of a bunch of different stuff.” But it’s his hope that, when you take a step back and look at it all in context, you realise that what seems chaotic close-up, is actually a work of art that God’s slowly creating.
The songs on ‘All The People Said Amen’ are created out of Matt’s sense of living as a community and his desire to remind listeners that we are all God’s work of art. The songs read like chapters in his auto-biography and the mix of live recordings and studio songs break many of the barriers that dictate the convention for studio albums.
The album fuses the popularity of Maher’s vibrant live show; offering music fans an assortment of writing and performance styles. “Burning In My Soul,” made its debut, voiced by Brett Younker, at the Passion 2013 conference while the album’s radio single release: “Lord, I Need You,” is a counter-cultural call to submission picking up the lines from the classic hymn '... every hour i need you'. Refrehingly wide in its range of style and content, all the songs try to identify themes within the story of Christianity that are worth saying, ‘Amen’ to and help people along the way.