Craig Morgan Holds Nothing Back During ‘The Father, My Son and the Holy Ghost’ [Listen]
Craig Morgan just released the song he needed us to hear. "The Father, My Son and the Holy Ghost" is cathartic to the very last note.
This new song is likely to do the same for fans as it has so clearly done for him. In the months and years since his son's tragic death, Morgan has slowly started to talk about the loss, and the conversation is doing him some good. Singing about it and singing about it live like he's preparing to do this fall and winter is something quite different.
Maybe this review should be a nuts and bolts assessment of the song's chosen chords and lyrics, but ignoring the emotion and courage it takes to bring the power ballad to the public would be irresponsible. This is the kind of vulnerable song an artist buries on an album, if he releases it at all.
It's not the song he goes on television to perform very often.
Slowly, "The Father, My Son and the Holy Ghost" builds, note by note, into another impressive vocal display from this singer. He calls his wife out by name and details his own excuses for avoiding friends and family early before diving into a chorus that's surely a word-for-word description of many mornings at home — mornings that Morgan has said previously begin at an hour that's almost ungodly for the rest of us. It's dangerous to assume most songs that sound personal are truly penned from real life without embellishment.
That's not a worry in the case of "The Father, My Son and the Holy Ghost," a tremendously powerful song that twists like a knife in the collective guts of the country music fan. That is to say: it hurts so good.
Did You Know?: It's been three years since Craig Morgan's son Jerry died in a boating accident.
WATCH: Craig Morgan Is Ready to Talk About His Son, Jerry
Craig Morgan's "The Father, My Son and the Holy Ghost" Lyrics:
Lights are shining bright it's always downtown on the road / I have friends that come from out of town asking me to go / They say there's so much going on / Why don't you come along and show us around.
I tell them Karen's not feeling well so I probably shouldn't go out / Besides I gotta fix a list of things I need to do around the house / Then I hang up the phone, turn the radio back on and sit back down.
Chorus:
In the morning I wake up give her a kiss, head to the kitchen / Pour a cup of wake me up and try to rouse up some ambition / Go outside, sit by myself but I ain't alone / I've got the father, my son and the holy ghost.
I've been beat up, I've been pushed and shoved / But never really knocked down / Between mom and dad, Uncle Sam and friends I somehow always pulled out / But the pain of this was more than I ever felt before / Yeah I was broke.
I cried and cried and cried until I passed out on the floor. Then I prayed and prayed and prayed until I thought I couldn't pray anymore / And minute by minute, day by day my God he gave me hope / I know my boy ain't here but he ain't gone.
Repeat Chorus
I hope, I love, I pray, I cry / I heal a little more each day inside / I won't completely heal until I go home.
Repeat Chorus
One day I'll wake up and I'll be home / With the father, my son and the holy ghost.
Blake Shelton Helped Craig Morgan Get to No. 1: