Craig Morgan Was Worried His Career Was Over Before ‘The Father, My Son and the Holy Ghost’
Craig Morgan didn't know how he'd go on after the death of his son, Jerry, in 2016, and before releasing his new single, "The Father, My Son and The Holy Ghost," he was pretty sure his country music career was over, too.
"It was so difficult to try to motivate myself to not just be here, but be here and be excited about it," Morgan explains to Rolling Stone, reflecting on how he was just going through the motions with music and touring after his 19-year-old son drowned while tubing.
"There were some shows where I thought, ‘I’m not sure if I should be doing this anymore. I always said I’m not going to stay in this business if I’m not relevant, and it was starting to feel like maybe my relevance wasn’t there," he says.
WATCH: Craig Morgan Is Ready to Talk About His Son, Jerry
Morgan remembers waking up one night around 3:30 AM with tears in his eyes, and he couldn't get the chorus of what would become "The Father, My Son and the Holy Ghost" out of his head. So he got up and wrote it down, and four hours later, the song was complete.
Tears were "pouring out" while he wrote his most personal song yet, he remembers. Initially, he'd planned for it to be just for his family's ears, but his band heard the track and encouraged — insisted — that he perform it live. Doing so took an emotional toll on him, of course, but a particularly moving performance of the song at the Grand Ole Opry changed everything.
"Ricky Skaggs was standing there and he put his hands on my shoulders and looked me dead in my eyes and said, ‘You have to sing that song. The world needs to hear it,'" Morgan says.
Skaggs isn't the only country star supporting Morgan's song. Blake Shelton has been championing it since its release, tweeting about Morgan's talent and encouraging country radio to play it. It worked — "The Father, My Son and The Holy Ghost" hit No. 1 on the all-genre chart on iTunes.
Blake Shelton Helped Craig Morgan Get to No. 1:
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