I’m ready to sing,
I’m ready to soar,
I’m ready to find what I was born for,
I’m ready to face the man I want to be,
Embrace my very own destiny.
Finally, I’m ready to love.
Finally,
Finally.
—“FINALLY” BY KATHIE LEE GIFFORD AND CHUCK HARMONY & CLAUDE KELLY OF LOUIS YORK FROM THE GOD OF THE OTHER SIDE
Nicole and I had just finished the demo of The God Who Sees when Angie asked me to come to her house and meet two of her newest friends, whom she called the weirdos.
“Why would I want to meet more weirdos?” I jokingly asked her. “I’ve been in show business my whole life.”
She laughed her Angie laugh but then explained, “Because you’re going to fall in love with them.”
And she was right. From the moment she introduced me to Claude Kelly and Chuck Harmony, I was a goner. Separately they are responsible for bringing us some of pop music’s biggest hits with artists like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Bruno Mars, and Lady Gaga. You name the superstar and they’ve either written or produced that star’s hits—or both.
Both were raised by single mothers who loved Jesus; Chuck in St. Louis and Claude in New York. Along with their industry successes they each were left with an aching emptiness in their souls and a deep longing for purpose in their lives and in their work. Independent of each other they left the music business—Claude to study the world’s religions and Chuck to attend seminary.
They realized soon after that they shared the same disillusionment about the music industry and decided to move somewhere together to pursue a new “soul season.” This time they worked with purpose, using their God-given gifts in a way that brought pride to their mothers and glory to the One who had borne their gifts in their mothers’ wombs.
God led them to Franklin, Tennessee, just two doors down from, yes, Angie and Greg. Within days of moving in, Angie showed up on their doorstep with cookies, and the friendship began. She encouraged them to meet me and encouraged me to meet them, and all three of us asked the same question: Why?
“Because you need to, that’s why.”
She was right.
We all sat around Angie’s kitchen table the first time we met and talked for hours. Although our details were different, our stories were the same—in spite of all the success in our lives, we each wanted more substance.
Angie made me play them the demo Nicole and I had just recorded with Sal. They sat and listened intently through the very last note.
“It’s perfect,” Claude said first.
“It is,” Chuck agreed. “Don’t change a single note.”
Claude added, “Not a note.”
Claude and Chuck had chosen the name Louis York as their stage name. Still, everyone called them the Weirdos because they had established a studio called the Weirdo Workshop where they dreamed, composed, recorded, and rehearsed their music. I started calling them “my boys” because that’s what they had already become—treasured, trusted little brothers to me.
The following spring was my first write with the Weirdos. I greeted them at my first little townhome, poured them some GIFFT wine, and let them shuffle through a pile of my lyrics. They quickly agreed they wanted to write “Finally,” an idea I had originally written for a future film, way down the road as one of the sequels to Then Came You. I initially envisioned it as a love song about a character who, after years of wasted living traveling the world as a musician, finally finds real love. We began writing with that intent.
When our lunch arrived we decided to take a break and eat. Angie suggested that while we ate we should watch The God Who Sees. It had just released, but Claude and Chuck had not yet seen it.
Not two minutes in they both shouted out various reactions of the same thing: “This is it! This is what we’ve been searching for! This is why we’re here! This is how we’re supposed to theatricalize our music!”
We were all excited, and I immediately blurted out, “Guys, this isn’t supposed to be a love song about a man and a woman. This is supposed to be the ultimate love song between God and His children. The prodigal son! We’re gonna write the next oratorio—The God of the Other Side!”
I said this with the utmost conviction because I knew it in my spirit. They did too. We all immediately said yes, then got back to work to finish the song, thrilled by our newfound purpose. In the end, we were totally satisfied with the first song we’d ever written together as a team. I was a Weirdo now, and it felt awesome.
A few weeks later we flew up to Connecticut for a long weekend to write the remaining songs of this larger project and record them in the studio at my home there. We had a blast and returned with the twenty-seven-and-a-half-minute demo.
I marvel at the way God works: He always does something abundantly better than anything we initially imagine. The song Nicole and I thought we were writing became The God Who Sees, and the song the boys and I were writing ultimately became The God of the Other Side. These writing journeys reminded me of the story in the Bible of the loaves and fishes: a small amount offered by a small boy turned into a miracle once given to Jesus, and it changed the world.
I remembered a conversation I’d had a few months before with my friend Donnadorable, who is a social contributor at TODAY. She had asked if she could listen to the symphony we had just recorded in Nashville.
“Of course,” I’d told her and led her into my dressing room, placing my Bose headphones over her ears. Donnadorable is a twenty-eight-year-old gorgeous young woman born to secular Iranian parents. She’s as hip and happening as they come, so I watched her intently as she listened. Near the end, tears were streaming down her beautiful face, and when it was over, she took the headphones off and said, “Oh my God, Kathie, this is a masterpiece!” (Her words, not mine, I swear.)
And then she said something that changed everything: “Can you make it longer? Can you add more stories? I’ve never heard these stories before!”
God used this precious young friend to show me the way forward. I was to keep telling the amazing stories that exist all through the Bible. I was to record them with the symphony. And I was to take the artists who performed them to Israel to bring the musical stories to life in film for a world that is “destroyed for lack of knowledge” of God’s Word (Hos. 4:6 NASB).
I went over to hug Donna and tell her how grateful I was to her. She beamed.
Soon after I wrote two more oratorios: The God of the How and When with Brett James and Sal Oliveri for a film I was producing, and The God of His Word with my longtime friend and collaborator David Pomeranz (originally based on a series of songs we had written for Gladys Knight to perform in concert on the TODAY plaza).
Neither the film nor the concert ever came to fruition. They weren’t supposed to. Because God had a different plan. A better plan than any of us had initially imagined.
Years ago God told me something I’ve never forgotten: “There are no crumbs on my table, Kathie. I use everything for good for My good purpose.”
We Weirdos have just begun to work on our next oratorio, The God of the Unknown. Our desire is to tell the story of Jesus’ birth as it really happened, not the Westernized, badly translated version the world has come to know and believe. Some may be angry with us for “messing with their manger.” We’re not trying to spoil Christmas for anyone; we’re hoping to make it more alive and exciting and full of hope than ever.
It’s never too late to get Weirdo! What might seem weird because we’re not used to it ultimately becomes something beautiful that God created with the sole and “soul” purpose to delight us.