Matthew West’s list of accomplishments, which include five Grammy nominations and an Emmy nod, is enough to make any creative professional feel a bit of envy. But more than the accolades, it is his industrial-strength work ethic that provides the real inspiration.
This year, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter known for signature songs such as “The God Who Stays” and “Hello, My Name Is” will perform at least 50 shows, both as a headliner and as a featured artist on Winter Jam 2026, Christian music’s biggest annual multiact tour that comes to State Farm Arena on Sunday. Even when he isn’t on stage, West remains deeply connected to his audience through the weekly “The Matthew West Podcast” and promoting his newly released 40-day devotional book, “Don’t Stop Praying: The God Who Hears Is Just a Breath Away.”
West has also earned a reputation as a rapid-response team of one.
A prime example occurred when filmmaker Candace Cameron Bure needed a song for her project “A Christmas … Present.” West sat down and wrote the period-accurate, 1940s-style track “Looking for Christmas” in just two hours.
“Candace calls me and says, ‘I need your help. I’m making this movie and we have the script, and we have the actors, and we have everything, but we don’t have the song. Can you write us one?’” West recently recalled. “There’s something about an assignment where the canvas is already started for you a little bit. You can kind of see it, and it almost feels a little bit more like a paint-by-number canvas than it is a blank canvas.”
The song, which also appeared on West’s 2023 album “My Story Your Glory,” was eventually nominated for an Emmy and became the signature holiday theme for the Great American Family network.
Credit: (Courtesy of Matthew West)
Credit: (Courtesy of Matthew West)
This level of productivity is the result of a realization West had during his college years: Natural talent alone is rarely enough to reach the finish line.
“I remember when I was studying music in college, I was like, ‘These people are twice as talented as me.’ So in my mind, I was like, ‘Well, if I’ve got half the talent, I better have twice the drive,’” he said. “I literally wrote that down in my notebook: Talent plus laziness doesn’t really get you very far.”
His disciplined approach mirrors the “10,000-hour rule” popularized by author Malcolm Gladwell. For West, mastery isn’t a stroke of luck, it’s the result of showing up even when the “feeling” of inspiration is absent.
“It’s about sitting down to write a song even when you don’t feel like writing a song,” said West, whose latest single is the just-released “Good.” “I can’t tell you how many of my songs have gone on to be maybe the most listened-to songs of my career that were written on days when I wasn’t in the mood. You get up, you put one foot in front of the other and you keep going.”
While West is firmly rooted in the Christian music world, it took time for him to embrace the genre label. Ultimately, he decided that his message should not be diluted for the sake of a wider audience if it meant compromising his core convictions
“Early on in my career, I didn’t like being limited to the title of ‘Christian recording artist,’ because I thought it was limiting. But the more stories that I hear, the more I realize that, man, whether you go to church every Sunday or not, everybody’s fighting hard battles.”
This perspective sparked a fundamental shift in West’s identity, moving him from being a songwriter to a dedicated storyteller — a vessel for the thousands of fans who share their lives with him through his Story House ministry.
“It’s been the most fulfilling part of my creative journey,” he said, “not telling my story to the world, but telling other people’s story. Somebody would trust me enough to tell me their story, and have such a desire that they would say, ‘Hey, I want you to tell my story because I hope that my story could help somebody else.”
As a case in point, West talks about a concert that he played in Philadelphia the night before this interview.
“A lady came up to me at a meet-and-greet. Her name was Patty, and she had tears in her eyes,” West said. “She said, ‘I saw you a year ago and I was fighting for my life. The doctors told me that I wasn’t going to live through the year, that’s how sick I was. And I’m here celebrating because I have a clean bill of health and I made it through it. And your song, ‘Don’t Stop Praying,’ has been an anthem for me through all my health difficulties.’ And sure enough, I step out onstage, and I look in the front row, and she’s sitting there, just like smiling from ear to ear. It was a beautiful glimpse of the stories that are in front of me every night at a concert. And I keep that front and center when I write songs.”
Ultimately, West believes that it’s this commitment to finding hope in the midst of hard battles that allows him to bridge the gap with those who may have drifted away from his specific faith tradition.
“I had a guy tell me recently, ‘I don’t really listen to your music anymore because I’m not a Christian anymore.’ And I said, ‘Well, you should give it a try. You might find that the stories in these songs are a lot like your own story,’” West said.
“Because at the end of the day, we’re all looking for the same thing. We’re all looking for hope.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
Winter Jam
Featuring Chris Tomlin, Matthew West, Katy Nichole, Disciple, Emerson Day and NewSong, along with speaker Zane Black
5 p.m. Sunday. $15 at the door. State Farm Arena, 1 State Farm Drive, Atlanta. 404-878-3000, jamtour.com.
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