Chicago-based Holly Halliwell is a new artist in Christian pop. Holly, a music lover at a young age, started writing and recording music when she was a child.
Recently, Holly released her first single, "Your Love," in April 2020. The song was an instant hit on Christian radio and was featured in several popular blogs, newspapers, and Spotify playlists. Since then, Holly has released several other songs. She took some time to talk about some of these recently released singles.
“Your Love”
This song, because it’s my debut single, will always be special to me. But, what I love is that I originally wrote it on acoustic guitar—not my primary instrument to say the least—over a year prior to the release, never knowing the opportunities that would come through it. I first wrote the chorus in my hometown of Chicago thinking it was the hookiest chorus I’d ever written, but I didn’t finish it until about a year later.
Very soon after, an opportunity opened up out of the blue to have it produced and recorded by GRAMMY award-winning producers, Seth Mosley and X O’Connor, which was an incredible experience. Once we finished recording it, "Your Love"—that’s all about how incomparable our God’s love is—became my debut single.
“Never Before”
When writing "Never Before," I was fresh into a new job, stepping into a totally new and different season than what I had been in before. I felt the weight of expectation not only from the new job, but also from myself because I wanted to do well in the job and in music. I had no idea how to balance that.
Ironically, in that season, I had no idea I was writing it for myself to process what I was going through, but I truly was. The song was a reminder to keep all eyes focused on Jesus. It’s incredibly easy to get lost in expectations, but when our eyes are focused on Him, nothing else matters except for following Him. Everything else fades away.
“Grace”
"Grace" was a fun one because it was the first song that was written, recorded, produced, and mixed all in my and my husband’s basement recording studio with just the two of us. I remember when writing the verse, I was eager to put into words the frustrating feeling of making the same mistakes over and over again. One day I’d feel like I’m really living out of God’s grace and the next day, I’d fall back into the mindset of performance and perfectionism. But, praise the Lord that He is always pouring out His grace over us. I’m just working on holding that truth closer every day.
“You”
I originally wrote this song about relationship struggles and, although the song would’ve been fine as that, I felt challenged to flip the lyrics around and turn it into a message that pointed people to the gospel. The meaning then became so much richer because it’s something that I think we all can so often forget. We don’t need to perfect our hearts or our lives before inviting Jesus in—He just wants us. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done or how we got to where we are, He just wants our hearts. We can come to Him just as we are—messiness and all.
“Brand New”
“Brand New” is the fifth and most recent single I’ve released—just after the new year, which lined up great with the message. We had a blast getting this one down because it’s so fun and groovy. It just gave me a reason to shout, “You made me new.” Like many, I am one who typically feels refreshed when the new year comes around, but I know—and we all know—that there’s nothing magical about January 1st—even if it comes after a year like 2020.
But, God, He makes us new–just like it says in 2 Corinthians 5:17. And, this renewing happens daily. I just hope we remember to take joy in that. My favorite part in recording this song out of any song so far was the ad-libs there at the end. Being made new in Christ really does give us an incredible reason to dance and sing our hearts out.
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