Country Music Star Alan Jackson Releases First New Album in 6 Years

Following her death, Jackson, who has previously used music to cope with difficult times, told Yahoo Entertainment that he went into the studio to record a song for her funeral.

"Well, when my mother died, I wrote that song on the album for her and for her funeral, and I went in the studio to do a little demo of it. I ended up cutting a couple of other tracks for when we thought we'd be going in the studio later that year," Jackson told the outlet.

Shortly after his mother's death, however, in 2018, his 28-year-old son-in-law died in a boating accident.

"And then that's when my first daughter, who had gotten married a year before…her husband died actually right before their first anniversary," Jackson added. "That kind of put a halt on everything for a while, and so those tracks kind of lay there for two or three years till we got back in the studio."

Jackson shared that after these losses, he didn't have it in him to write new music.

"It took a couple of years to get through all that. I just didn't feel like writing. When you're the daddy and you kind of feel like you're the head man, and you've got your wife and your daughters and everybody, you really hurt more for them going through it. It just took a long time for me to feel good again, to feel like I actually wanted to sit down and try to write something."

By the time Jackson was ready to get back in the studio, the album was further delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Finally completed, Jackson's Where Have You Gone album is a love letter to classic country music. The album features steel guitars and fiddles and offers messages of faith and family, common themes in classic country music.

One song in particular, "Where Her Heart Has Always Been (Written for Mama's Funeral with An Old Recording of Her Reading the Bible)," begins with an audio recording of Jackson's mother reading from Luke 2:9. The Bible passage reads, "And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid."

Jackson told Yahoo that before his mother's passing, his sisters had asked their mom to read the Christmas story from the Bible.

"They had her read the Christmas story from the Bible and some other things, just to have a recording of her, and they sent that for Christmas. And I said, 'Man, that's so cool.' So, we tried to pull out a line that wasn't so Christmassy in there that would work. I was just so happy to get that. And I just think it makes the song."

Where Have You Gone is available now, wherever you get music.

Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Jason Kempin/Staff

Kayla Koslosky has been the Editor of ChristianHeadlines.com since 2018. She has B.A. degrees in English and History and previously wrote for and was the managing editor of the Yellow Jacket newspaper. She has also contributed to IBelieve.com and Crosswalk.com.