New York, NY, March 19 2018: Dove Award-winning and Grammy and Stellar award-nominated gospel singer-songwriter Jonathan McReynolds has debuted his new album “Make Room” at #1 on Billboard’s Current Gospel Albums Chart and #2 on Top Christian/Gospel Albums, as well as breaking into the mainstream charts at #27 on Top Albums and #97 on the Hot 200. The live LP is his third full album and the fourth overall release for the 28-year-old musician, who also holds a Masters in theology from Moody Theological Seminary and is currently an adjunct member of the Columbia College faculty. His music has been cheered on by music icons from Stevie Wonder, Nicki Minaj, and Tori Kelly to gospel giants like CeCe Winans, Yolanda Adams, and Kirk Franklin, who dubbed McReynolds “the future of gospel music.”
Jonathan is currently on the road to promote the album, with recent and upcoming high-profile media appearances at TBN Network’s “Praise,” WGN TV Chicago, KDFW TV Dallas, WTTG TV in DC, as well as an anticipated performance at this year’s Stellar Awards, and a recent appearance at CBN’s The Turning Point in January.
Check out Jonathan’s performances of “Not Lucky, I’m Loved” and “Better” with his band on WGN TV, after singing the weather forecast for his childhood hero, Chicago meteorologist Tom Skilling.
The highly-anticipated follow-up to Jonathan’s 2015 “Life Music: Stage Two,” (which spent four weeks at #1 on the Billboard gospel chart) was recorded entirely live this past May in Chicago, IL. The album follows Jonathan, his band, and an impressive roster of guest vocalists through a constantly-evolving live set, bouncing between improvisatory and tightly composed moments. This elastic nature of the album is a testament to Jonathan’s mastery of his talents, that the album’s whole cast sits just as easily in his impassioned and disciplined songwriting as in the ecstatic moments of spontaneity.
The album’s release is preceeded by four singles, the first released in September for “I’m Not Lucky, I’m Loved,” which debuted at #1 on Billboard’s digital gospel song sales and was followed a few months later by a music video featuring fan-submitted videos of themselves singing along and dancing to Jonathan’s track. The second single was breakout hit “Cycles (ft. DOE)” which peaked at #3 on Billboard’s gospel digital song sales. In the weeks leading up to the release, Jonathan has also previewed the tracks “Lover of My Soul” and “Better.” In truth, there is no shortage of “singles” on the album… between Jonathan’s impassioned and acrobatic vocal performance (live, no less) and the joyful audience response, each track on the album has an electricity that carries the listener across longer and shorter tracks with the same momentum and excitement. Full track list is available below:
1. Life Room Anthem [ft. Dee-1]
2. Great Is The Lord [ft. Tonya Baker & Corey Barksdale]
3. Cycles [ft. DOE]
4. L.R.F. (Rollercoasters)
5. Comparison Kills
6. Graduate [ft. The HamilTones]
7. Better
8. L.R.F. (Keep On Doin’ Better) [ft. Darrel Walls, Alic Walls, & Latice Crawford]
9. Not Lucky, I’m Loved
10. Make Room
11. L.R.F. (Move That Over) [ft. Travis Greene, Anthony Brown, & Brian Courtney Wilson]
12. Lover of My Soul
13. Smile (Life Room) [ft. Grashovia “Grandy Wilson]
Check out “ Not Lucky, I’m Loved” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCXfqe0nwHQ
Check out “Cycles (feat. DOE)” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Eu2aYgWmVA
Each song on the album, though unfolding into very different energies and showcasing very different strengths for the versatile Jonathan McReynolds, also share one important quality that is central to Jonathan’s growing appeal and respect: his ability to elicit immediate emotional responses from anyone whose ear he is able to catch. Whether in Jonathan’s playful teasing of the audience in “Great is the Lord” (“on a scale from 1-3 how deep do you want this album to be?”) the audible audience responses and whoops in “Cycles,” or even in the joyful faces of the fans dancing and singing in the “I’m Not Lucky, I’m Loved” video, it becomes clear that just as Jonathan says in “Lucky,” his rising star, in the gospel world and in the mainstream world, has everything to do with the way Jonathan is so authentically tapped into the emotional reality of his work and his beliefs. When Jonathan says “I’m not lucky, I’m loved,” he is referring to God’s love but it’s easy to see in “Make Room” that God is not the only one who feels that way.
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