Margaret Becker
A slow burn.
That's how Margaret Becker describes her career. No mention of her three Dove Awards, four Grammy nominations, fourteen #1 radio hits, or the plethora of accolades and awards heaped on her by the industry. No concern for the PR side, the spin side, the "star" side of the business. No desire to fit the preconceived mold.
"I'm not a star," she says simply. "I don't want to be that type of person. In fact, I have probably sabotaged moments when I could have been that person. One of the first things I told Sparrow when I signed with them was, 'I am not going to be the fastest runner on the track. But I will be here years after other people are gone. I'm a slow burn.'"
And burn she has. Through ten albums over the past dozen years, Margaret has burned her way into the hearts of countless thousands of fans with such searing hits as "Find Me," "The Hunger Stays," "Say The Name" and "Clay and Water." With her latest release, What Kind of Love, Margaret turns up the heat another notch, exploring what it means to celebrate God in the midst of difficult situations.
"Isaiah 45:3 talks about getting the treasures of darkness," Margaret explains. "That scripture has always fascinated me. It seems like those are two unrelated things, yet God spoke that word as a blessing. And I think I have been through enough darkness to know that if you go through those difficult times, under the hand of God, you do come out on the other side with treasures. That's what this album is about. It is a celebration of sorts. Believe it or not, What Kind of Love is an upbeat album about suffering."
It is that dichotomy, that persistence when faith doesn't align with experience, that Margaret finds intriguing. And it is the reality of 'all things work together for good,' even though we sometimes never see the silver lining, which causes her to stop and ponder. It is a theme she returns to throughout What Kind of Love. "'I Won't Be Persuaded' is a treasures of darkness song," she says. "It is about the fact that you can not always make sense out of why the One who can make all the hurting in our lives stop, doesn't."
"I believe suffering makes us more like Him, ultimately," Margaret muses, "but in the midst of the suffering, that doesn't seem quite enough." More than just theoretical assumptions, Margaret says she went through her own personal season of darkness during the making of What Kind of Love. "I got very sick," she says simply. "I've always been in good health and felt pretty invincible. It all caught up with me, and I couldn't understand why. I was in a real funk over it. But in the midst of it, this little song, 'All That's Left,' came to me. It says, I'll break down if that is what it takes to bring Christ forth in my life."
Both musically and lyrically What Kind of Love finds Margaret once again on the vanguard of what is happening in music today. Like a modern day Livingston, she tramples off the beaten path, exploring aural vistas rarely heard; expressing concepts rarely verbalized.
"I am at a point in my life where I count every day," she says. "Every day has to be filled with something meaningful. Every album I have made is a commentary on where I was at that time. The journey that took me from there to here is a journey of maturation. The one thread that runs throughout my writing is the passion of pursuit."
It was that 'passion of pursuit' that led Margaret on a self-imposed, three-year sabbatical of re-discovery. "After Grace, I had to take a collective breath in every area of my life. Since I write out of my personal experience, I had to have some personal experience to write from. As much as I love what I do, it is not who I am. Music is not my identity. Being able to express - that's my identity. "
Margaret used the time to write outside her comfort zone; co-writing an entire children's series with a scriptwriter, acting as a guest columnist for Campus Life Magazine, and writing articles for numerous women's magazines. The editors at Harvest House, impressed by her prose, approached her, with a curious question, "Do you have a book in you?"
Margaret had already been working on some "real life essays about real life experiences". This collection of essays soon became her first book, the poignant, With New Eyes. She is currently putting the finishing touches on her next book, Growing Up Together, a book featuring sibling stories, which is scheduled for release in the summer of 2000.
Margaret approaches songwriting with an outside-the-lines mentality. "I'm writing music for people who are not afraid to think," she says flatly. "Because God cannot be threatened by our small brains, no matter how deep we think."
Co-writing with some of Christian and mainstream music's finest songwriters gave Margaret an opportunity to get outside those lines. Chris Eaton, Robbie Nevil, Henk Poole, Michael Quinlan, and Lowell Alexander all contributed to the amazing depth of What Kind of Love. And she credits producers Tedd Tjornhom and Lynn Nichols with taking her vision of "strings throughout" to the next level. Like Margaret, What Kind of Love burns with a slow intensity. And like staring into the embers, it appears constant, yet constantly shifting, as if you could grasp the mystery if you just stared at it long enough. "This album is about that mystery," she explains. "It is about being persistent when your faith does not align with your experience. It is about remaining consistent as a Christian even when all things don't appear to be working together for good. It is about recognizing who God is, and celebrating that. And applying that celebration to real life situations that don't always match up with our perceptions, and coming out on the other side stronger for it." |
