Steven Curtis Chapman grappled with the dilemma facing every recording artist when he began to contemplate writing songs for his 2022 album, Still.

In the streaming era when little physical product is sold and most listeners choose only a song or two from any artist, is there a reason to make an album?

“That’s a question I’ve asked myself quite a bit. Really, does it make sense to make a record?” Chapman said ahead of his Feb. 22 stop at Honeywell Center in Wabash. “Do people do that anymore, or do they just make singles and stream songs? I love albums. But they’re not being listened to that much.”

However, Chapman said, his internal struggle was deeper and more existential than simply contemplating changes in the manner in which people experience music. 

“My real wrestling, honestly — I’m being open, vulnerable, and honest with this — I wrestled a lot with ‘Does anybody really care?’ ” he said. “I’ve made 23, 24, 25 records. I’ve been doing this 30 plus years…

“I went to see the Doobie Brothers, Journey, Toto,” Chapman said. “One of them said, ‘We’ve found new songs make people want to go to the bathroom.’ The funny part was he then said, ‘This song made people go to the bathroom in 1982,’ and it was a giant hit. All artists that have been around for a while can relate to that.”

That admission gave Chapman, 62, the most-awarded artist in contemporary Christian music history, pause. 

After all those albums, five Grammy Awards, some 60 Gospel Music Dove Awards, including a record seven Artist of the Year awards, he had to ask himself if there was a reason to create new music for the audience that has embraced him since his first hit, “His Eyes,” off his 1988 sophomore album, Real Life Conversations.

“So you think, ‘If I’m going to do this, are enough people going to be interested?’ ” Chapman said. “I have people come up and talk to me about my music, they’re really well meaning, but they’ll say, ‘The new record is great, but there’s never going to be another ‘Great Awakening,’ ‘I Will Be Here,’ ‘Cinderella,’ or whatever. That’s a beautiful, wonderful thing. But as a creative person, I think, ‘I don’t need to do this new song.’ ”

Getting personal

As it turned out, Chapman seemingly needed to do at least one new song, “Don’t Lose Heart” off Still, which made him the first contemporary Christian music artist to have 50 No. 1 hits in the genre.

But “Don’t Lose Heart” isn’t a stand-alone composition. It’s a key part of Still.

“You don’t read chapter 14 of a book, you’re not going to get the whole story,” Chapman said. “That’s how I’ve felt about albums. The way I approach things and write them, there’s a journey. There’s a journey of life and faith, my life journey, my faith journey. They’re like my journals. I’ve never been a very good journaler. I’ll start and after a few months, I’ll have like four pages.

“As the world has changed and gone through so much over the last few years with the global pandemic and everything that’s going on socially, I’ve lost friends and family members, gone through some tough things, emotionally and in my life, I’m wrestling things out in songs. That’s what I’ve always done.”

One of the songs, for example, was triggered by the Black Lives Matter protests. It’s “Living Color,” a tribute to his best friend in seventh grade, Carlton Bell. Chapman had begun the song about Bell, who is Black, 20 years ago and finished it for the album, leaving in a line where he expresses concern about writing about race.

Other songs deal with his pain, grief and recovery from tragedies, like the 2008 death of his 5-year-old daughter.

“The song, ‘Unfixable,’ it’s all of these things,” he said. “I’m a fixer. I’ve come to realize my whole life my role has been to fix broken stuff. Then we went through all this stuff, like the death of my daughter a few years ago, and I had to learn I can’t fix all the broken stuff. There are just things you can’t fix this side of heaven. How do you deal with that?”

Being honest with self, God

The personal approach sets Chapman’s songs apart from hymns, praise music, and evangelically oriented songs.

“I grew up singing songs in church, the hymns, the praise songs,” Chapman said. “But the things that have always been most meaningful for me, in songs, or let’s go to Psalms, where King David is saying, ‘Lord, are you going to forgive me? I’m lost.’ He’s so honest in that. I didn’t get that until a few years ago. 

“I want that honesty, that there are things you are searching for in Scripture. You don’t have to write this fancy, religious song. You can write, ‘I listen when you say help,’ or, ‘I’m hurting.’ I can hold onto that vulnerability, being honest.”

That honesty, Chapman said, extends to his personal participation in some worship songs.

“With worship songs, I’ve probably sung, ‘I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid,’ in church hundreds of times. But I’ve stopped. I can’t sing that in good conscience. God knows my heart. I struggle with fear. I could sing, ‘I don’t want to be afraid.’ That’s different. That’s what I want to bring out in my songs.”

That’s also what Chapman will be bringing out in the concerts

“The thing about the tour and the record Still is, after 35 years plus, I, as a singer-songwriter and a follower of Jesus, who tries in the songs I’m writing, the poetry I’m writing, to tell about this journey I’m on, which has been more wonderful, more painful than I could have imagined, still, I want to keep doing this, singing about it,” he said.

“You can start the journey 1987, 1992, or wherever you came in. We’ll come together and we get to remember when those songs were out and what they meant to us,” he said. “But we also get to remember how they’ll take us forward.”