Sturgill Simpson’s Best Sermons

When Sturgill Simpson sings, it’s not hard to imagine him behind a splintering pulpit—the sermon his cross to bear. Or before a tent revival crowd, his voice projecting without a microphone, echoing off the canvas stretched into a makeshift heaven. The Grammy winner would likely bristle at being compared to preachers, yet he holds something in common with the best of them.

Alongside the likes of Chris Stapleton and Jason Isbell, Simpson ushered in a welcome age of songwriting more than a decade ago. These artists and like-minded peers pay equal debts to honky-tonk sounds and rock bands, prizing craft over other measures of success.

His timbre forever seasoned with Kentucky weather, Simpson’s shifting delivery serves each song: snarling sharp, cracking wise, or drawing from wells of warm, compassionate water. Whatever the tone, his message favors a more expansive world. Like the best preachers, like Jesus himself, Simpson’s words—especially the hard ones—are meant to embolden radical softness.

Simpson recently inhabited the new Johnny Blue Skies persona to release Passage Du Desir. With that album fresh in the atmosphere, it’s worth a brief backspin through his catalog to identify five of his greatest sermons in song.

“Life Ain’t Fair and the World is Mean” High Top Mountain (2013)

The opening statement from Simpson’s debut employs a traditional sound to question the very traditions of country music. Open rhythms and pealing pedal steel barely veil barbed descriptions of a “label man” who finds Simpson’s writing too sincere, advising him to churn out paint-by-numbers outlaw songs. Brushing off the encounter, he leans on family history, love for his wife, and his own creative conscience to keep true.

Using the language of country music to fulfill, not abolish, the sound is Simpson’s version of “You have heard that it was said . . . but I tell you,” a rhetorical device Jesus repeats throughout the Sermon on the Mount. “Well the most outlaw thing that I’ve ever done / Was give a good woman a ring,” he sings subversively, but as an act of love. The label man’s finish line is just a starting block for Simpson; pointing past expectation, he directs the listening heart toward something more timeless and transcendent.

“The Promise” Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (2014)

This pitch-perfect cover preserves the hallmarks of When in Rome’s 1988 pop marvel, yet somehow seems like a natural overflow of Simpson’s soul. An ode to friendship and fidelity among romantic flames, his rendering underscores the difficulty of keeping covenants. Jesus cautioned against swearing oaths at all in Matthew 5, knowing full well only God is strong enough to seal his promises.

From descending guitar notes in the solo break to Simpson’s curling phrases on the final chorus, everything about the track properly weighs a devoted word. Simpson’s resolve is noble, but still you hear him strain, pleading for more love, maybe even a measure of divine strength to make his promises mean something.

“Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)” A Sailor’s Guide to Earth (2016)

Can a father’s soft touch be a sermon? Ask the children Jesus welcomed or the prodigal son in the center of his dad’s embrace. Simpson opens this record, an inheritance for his firstborn, with hints of every sound to appear within. Chiming bells and lush sound beds give way to planing piano and a ’60s R&B shimmy. Against this shifting backdrop, he acknowledges sons aren’t the only prodigals: “And if sometimes / Daddy has to go away / Well, please don’t think / That it means I don’t love you.” But devoted fathers always come back, and know how to give their children good gifts in the meantime. Simpson leaves his son with enough sound wisdom to fill any temporary distance between them.

“Keep It Between the Lines” A Sailor’s Guide to Earth

Simpson’s songs further an ethic that’s more about how you live than exactly what you do; there’s a right way to treat yourself and others. With an irresistible country-soul vibe, “Keep It Between the Lines” takes a direct approach to these values, calling listeners to appreciate some of life’s guardrails: “Keep your eyes on the prize, everything will be fine / Long as you stay in school / Stay off the hard stuff / And keep between the lines.” Simpson lays out a righteous stretch of asphalt before the listener, knowing few will find it. But like the prophets, he believes walking in this good way leads to a better life.

“Call to Arms,” A Sailor’s Guide to Earth

Vegas chapel horns—pointed and polished till they blaze—and an impossibly cool, impossibly coiled groove frame Simpson’s spitting litany of 21st-century hotspots. In the parlance of a Wilco song, he wages a “war on war,” kicking the legs out from under the logic used to prop up global conflict. This “Call to Arms” is anything but—rather, the song exists as a backward Beatitude. If the warmongers be cursed, then, by implication, Simpson stresses just how blessed the peacemakers truly are. He and his band play with righteous, unrestrained anger, making for an incendiary recording and one of the greatest Saturday Night Live performances ever.

_______________

At Think Christian, we encourage careful cultural discernment. We recognize and respect that many Christians choose not to engage with pop culture that contains particular content, such as abuse, sex, violence, alcohol or drug use, or that employs the use of coarse language. To that end, we suggest visiting Common Sense Media for detailed information regarding the content of the particular pieces of pop culture discussed in this article.