Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me
Sometimes a song is so powerful that listening to it and thinking about how it makes you feel is the best way to experience it. Rather than attempting to analyze the song’s meaning we choose to let the composers speak. Here is what band members Richard Thompson and Jonny Robinson had to say about CityAlight and writing modern hymns.
Our hymn “Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me” took us 12 weeks to write. We dove deep into the idea of what it meant to have Christ dwell in us. What an incredibly profound, mysterious truth. It needed time. We wrote and rewrote the songs many, many times. We struggled for every word.
We are keen to make sure our songs are accessible. Complicated melodies, with large ranges, can distract from this pursuit. The more we can allow the melody to ‘get out of the way’ the better. Those songs that everyone loves—the ones that are sung the loudest—are often the ones with very simple, predictable melodies. Yet simple melodies are often the hardest to write. We spend a lot of time on creating melodies that carry emotion and lead the church through the journey of the song.