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Share via EmailThe Story Behind The Song Video: Easier (The Song Of The Wiseman)
by Jason Gray on October 2, 2012 [Editor's Note: Jason's new album, Christmas Stories: Repeat the Sounding Joy, releases on October 9th. You can now pre-order it now from the Rabbit Room store, in both physical and digital formats. Download two songs immediately when you pre-order: “Christmas Is Coming,” written with our own Randall Goodgame, and “Easier.”]
“Easier” was anything but easy to write and is the song that gave me the most trouble as I wrote it with my friend Joel Hanson. When we started it I knew right away that I really cared about this song, which always complicates things because I start to get nervous about failing it!
I recently spoke at a songwriting workshop and used this song as an example of how many drafts you might write before you find the final iteration of a song. I wrote pages and pages of lyrics (I just went back and counted: a total of 42 pages). At one point I pared the song down to 7 minutes and it had this extra bridge that I really liked. But less was more and I remember the day when I finally surrendered, threw away about half the song—including parts I really loved—and finally found a way through to the end. It helps me to test a song by playing it for real people, so I played it one night on the bus for the guys I was on tour with and after months of working and reworking it finally felt like it was the song it most wanted to be. I hope you agree!
Here’s a post I wrote about it several months ago here in the Rabbit Room.
Singer/Songwriter Jason Gray is one of the hardest working men we know and also one of the most gracious. He might technically live in Minnesota, but he's really just a wayward Nashvillian. We look forward to the day he comes home.
11 Comments
229 days ago
That song is so beautiful and poignant. I can’t wait to hear the whole album!
229 days ago
Jason,
Thank you for sharing your creative process. I have already pre-ordered your Christmas album. I love your thoughtful approach to what I believe will become one of my favorite Christmas CDs. Your attention to detail is like the fine architects of old.
Blessings
229 days ago
45 PAGES?!?!?!?!? and you threw most of them away???
I would have liked to at least read them….I like reading lyrics!! But I still like the final song and I listen to it as much as I can from that old post 
229 days ago
45 Pages??!?! Man!! I woulda read those for the fun of it even if it wans’t in the song!!
229 days ago
Nicole C. Mullen also has a good one along similar lines called “Lamb of God.”
It’s an interesting question whether or not the wisemen would have reasoned that way. Because I doubt they understood that Jesus was in fact God himself, destined to be the sacrificial Savior of the world if we would ask him into our hearts, I don’t know if they would have had those questions. I suppose it’s possible. They were Gentiles and not Jews, so we can’t base their thoughts on what the Jews were expecting. Who knows how much God revealed to them? Either way, we do know that the gifts they did give were urgently needed and valuable to Jesus and his family during his earthly existence. So in that sense one could say they offered exactly what was required of them when it was required.
229 days ago
Ah yes. I admit that my reflections are a bit fanciful, but hopefully worthwhile all the same as an occasion to think of a certain aspect of the nature of gift-giving. At least in my own life I’m aware that sometimes my gift-giving has been a way of hiding, or of giving one thing so I don’t have to give another. A part of my hope in writing these songs was to let some aspect of these character’s story connect me to my own, and so I suppose the song is probably more about accurately naming something in me than it is about accurately documenting a historical figure–more about a human story than a story about an individual human.
229 days ago
Of course. That’s really the point of the record, and it’s a totally natural shift from the wisemen to our own “gifts.”
229 days ago
Jason, that’s a fun thing about your record!! We get to see how you feel you can relate to each person, and in the process we get to see how you feel about the story. Therefore don’t worry about being fanciful, it is more fun to decode the meaning but in the end it all means the same!
227 days ago
Jason, I don’t know you personally but sometimes it seems that you know me! So many of your lyrics speak to and of my heart and experiences. Thank you for sharing your gift and real life frail humanity.
227 days ago
Great (really great…) stuff, Jason. Excited to hear the full record. I’m not normally a Christmas album kind of guy, but these I would definitely enjoy. Love your insights on Joseph/Mary as well. To see him as having gone through the forgiving process and that being the kind of man God would want to raise his own Son. Beautiful. (sorry, I know that was on the other post, but good nonetheless!!).
Blessings to you brother.
223 days ago
Thanks for sharing this. I love seeing how thoughtful and patient a writer is with his craft. Looking forward to the album!
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