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Judging by your 2003 Second Decade Tour, it seemed like people were more responsive to your worship segment than your pop songs. Do you think that's due to your absence from pop, or is it more indicative of the popularity of worship?

Smith I think it's a little of both. The worship albums were such hits with people, they'd probably be happy if we just did those albums straight through. And I think a lot of people probably went to the show just to hear the worship stuff because it's all they own of my albums. So they probably just weren't familiar with "Wired for Sound" or "Rocketown," and that's fine. Who would have ever guessed that the worship albums would be the biggest records of my career?

Do you think this new audience will now embrace your pop sound?

Smith "Healing Rain" seems like the perfect song to bridge between those in my audience that want to hear worship and those that want to hear more of the pop/rock. Same with "Here I Am" and "All I Want," both written by Martin Smith. They're both worship, but they're progressive, not congregational.

How did "Here I Am" come to be?

Smith I'll never forget Martin asking me where I go to pray and get alone with God. And I told him that I come here to my farm. So this place was the inspiration for the first song. The opening line is, "There's a place where I go where the angels hear me pray." The neat thing about this record to me is that it starts and closes with prayer.

The closing prayer being "All I Want?"

Smith Right. Martin's writing is articulate and meditative. It's really an interesting song to me, kind of dark and soaring, without a lot in the way of lyrics. But I absolutely love the line, "All I have is a love that set my world on fire/Let it fall, let it burn in me/And oh to be a friend of God is all that I desire/All I want is to be faithful/All I want is You." That just sums it all up for me. Nothing else satisfies. It's all I pray for, and it seems an appropriate way to end the record.

Talk about "We Can't Wait Any Longer."

Smith That song was inspired by my work with Bono and DATA. He's doing a great work. I believe we can't simply turn a blind eye to 6,500-7,000 kids who die every day [of AIDS] without doing anything about it. It's my challenge for people to become pro-active in some way—call your congressman, call your senator, support the AIDS initiative, whatever—just get involved somehow. Do something.

That's what the whole song is about. It's the heaviest on the record, but I think it's important for people to hear it. After I finished recording it, I had a wild idea that we should try to use The Uganda Children's Choir. I happened to work with them through GMA, so I thought it would be powerful to have them on the record as a heart cry in the middle of the song, singing in Swahili. In the bridge, they're singing, "Somebody save me, somebody help us." At the end, not to get too dark and depressing, but I kind of paint this scene of death and destruction, and there's a little Ugandan girl saying, "Please, somebody free us." I'm hoping it'll be a wake-up call to Americans.

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