Will Allen: 'God told me to do music'
Image Credit: Will Allen Press
Josh Kinghorn,
14th Jul 2021
Tags:
Music
Interview
Will Allen
Pop
Talking faith and music with a new artist on our playlist, Will Allen.
Josh: Let's start at the beginning. Where and when did you think, “You know what, I'm kind of good at this music thing”?
Will: I was probably about 10 years old and started playing the drums. Did I ever think I was good at it then? No. When I was 14, I started playing guitar and I started to sing. Did I think I was good at it then? No, I thought I was really bad at it then but actually felt like God wanted me to do it.
Then I started to pray to God, I was just like “God, if you want me to do this, you have to give me a passion for it. Because if you don't, I'm not gonna be able to do this.”
So did I think I was good at it then? No. But I did it because I felt like God had a calling on my life. Now I can honestly say is my favourite thing to do, it's how I deal with my emotions.
When I'm all clogged up with loads of stuff, like I feel rubbish but I don't know how I'm feeling, I pick up my guitar. Ultimately, I just pick up my guitar and feel close to God, I feel better about life.
So do I feel like I'm good now? Yeah. I feel like God's put this thing on my life that he's given me a gift for, and I can't deny that anymore.
God's given me something that I love to do and other people enjoy it. So good or bad, I guess it doesn't really matter. I love doing it, and people love what I do, generally.
Josh: At what point did you think you should start writing your own stuff?
Will: My eldest brother plays the bass and my middle brother, older than me, he plays guitar and sings as well. He's amazing. So I kind of played drums alongside what they did, it was never really me writing songs.
But at the age of 14, I felt like God had put singing and writing songs on my life. So I picked up a guitar then and started writing songs.
I still remember the first song I wrote, it wasn't great. My pastor at the time said “You got to sing it to me”, but I didn’t really want to do that. It was just the most horrible experience of my life. Just shaking, red face, sweating singing this song.
I know I was singing every word wrong, every note wrong. But I guess that you just have to do those things with music, you have to do those things with creativity.
Creativity is all about the heart. At some point, you're going to have to put your heart on the line, and that’s scary.
See more of Will's interview here.
