With career sales exceeding 450,000 units, the acoustic guitar-wielding, Texas-based duo Shane & Shane returns with their eighth album, Everything Is Different. Produced by Pete Kipley, the album embraces a more corporate worship style, inspired by Shane Barnard and Shane Everett's role as worship leaders at their home church in Dallas. Influenced by the pair’s ongoing involvement in teaching and training students in the area of worship ministry, Everything Is Different offers moments that range from vertical praise to quiet reflection.

I got the opportunity to interview Shane Everett about the title track "Everything Is Different." You can listen to our entire interview here

Please tell me the background in writing the song?

There are a number of songs on this album that have been in the process of being written for the past 15 years or so. According to Shane Barnard, "Everything is Different" is one of those songs that has been in process for years, probably since I became a believer.

I didn’t grow up in a Christian home. I had great parents, but they didn’t know the Lord until later on in life. I found the Gospel when I was in high school and, since then, everything has changed in a thousand different ways.

That is especially true of the past couple of years. My daughter was sick when she was a newborn and has needed a number of surgeries. Shane Barnard points to the death of his father, a new believer at the age of 68, and his recent marriage to Christian artist Bethany Dillon as examples of the vast difference between his old mindset and his new perspective. When Shane’s father passed, that was his first up close experience with death. Christ took the sting out of death. He conquered sin and death. That is completely different from the hopelessness of experiencing the death of a loved one outside of Christ. The premise of the song is how the Holy Spirit gives us hope in the hard times.

Did you base the song on any bible verses?

We drew heavily on scriptures from Isaiah to make its point in this song, comparing the wages of the world with the free gifts of God. From ashes to beauty, from heaviness to praise, from no way to a clear path, from the impossible to all things are possible. The song references Isaiah 61:3

To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.

What's the takeaway message for listeners?

Conversely, walking through marriage in light of who Jesus is, and what He said about marriage, is vastly different from the horror stories you hear from people in the world who view marriage as just two people trying to get along in the same space. "Everything is Different" is a song about all of these things that are completely changed and how different they are in Christ.

Here are the lyrics:

Who am I to know Your glory
Who am I to recognize Your voice
Calling out

How could I be in Your story
God who was and is, and is to come
Who has won

I was dead in my sin
You came in, yeah

Chorus: You made a way when there was no way
You covered heaviness with garments of praise
You wrote a song and you're singing it over me
I feel a dead heart beating now
This revelation makes me want to shout
That Jesus has been sent
And everything is different
Oh yes it is

You turn ashes into beauty
You are for me not against me now
You found me somehow

You turned mourning into dancing
You turned weeping into joyful noise
Oh rejoice

I was dead in my sin
You came in, yeah

Chorus

What matter of love
That You would call us sons and daughters
We call Abba Father
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
I will never be the same

In Christ, everything changes. In Christ we can have prosperity in the midst of suffering. In Christ, He is working for the good of all those who call on Him. If you’ve claimed Jesus as your Savior, “everything is different.” In those hard times, are you letting God cover you with “garments of praise?” During hardships or trouble, are relying solely on Jesus for strength and is your life changed by Jesus?

Here's a great video of the duo performing and talking about the song (song starts about 4:00 in).