This week’s suggestion is a very recent song and many won’t have heard of. It’s rare to get asked for the stories behind recent songs but it’s a tale of two brothers dealing with some hardship trying to make it and with the help of a special person in their life, decided to write and record a song and have an accompanying video, well, a mini film really, as a tribute to that person.
The story begins with two brothers, Joel and Luke Smallbone who were born in Wahroonga, New South Wales, Australia, in 1984 and 1986 respectively, but grew up in Sydney with mum who was a housewife and dad who was a concert promoter. The boys had a sister who is seven years older called Rebecca who launched a successful solo recording career under the name Rebecca St. James. In the late 80s, their father, David, was organising a concert tour which went horribly wrong and the family lost everything. A couple of years later the whole family relocated to Nashville, Tennessee and the two brothers, who were still at school, began providing backing vocals for their sister. In an interview with Billboard, Luke said, “We came to America broke, and it forced us to really bond as a family. We were all Australians in a new country, we all talked weird. Our family has five boys and two girls and we’ve all just watched each other’s backs.”
On leaving school the boys decided to form a band initially inventively calling themselves Joel & Luke, soon to change to Austoville and then settling with For King and Country, “after a British battle cry,” Luke explained. “We wanted a band name that carried more meaning. We were in the studio recording our debut record and Joel had the idea of, calling ourselves All The King’s Men, like the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme. Our producer overheard our conversation and swung around in his chair and said, ‘What about For King & Country?’ And we all felt a sense of providence at that moment. For King and Country was the battle cry of English soldiers willing to lay down their lives for their king and their country. And now it has become our mission, to lay down our lives for our King and our country.”
Unsung Hero implies the subject matter is about a person, but in fact it’s about two people – their parents and the things they sacrificed in order to give their children a good upbringing, which, as kids, we all took for granted. Naturally, later in life and usually when we become parents ourselves, we realised what they actually did. They wanted to show their appreciation for their support in their life choices and how they shaped them into the men and women they are now. Its touching lyrics, ‘For all the times I fell down you showed me how to stand, And when we crossed the ocean, you were my safe place to land, Been on a thousand stages but when it’s all said and done, I hope I make you proud of, of the man that I’ve become’ captured the sentiment and even inspired a movie which was written and directed by Joel who stars in the film playing the part of his father, his sister Rebecca as Kirrilee Berger and also stars Lady A singer Hilary Scott as Luanne Meece. Diesel La Torraca portrays Joel as a young lad.
It was co-written by Seth Mosely and Federico Vindver, Mosely is a producer in Music City and has won a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Christian Music Album category for his production of King & Country’s second album, Run Wild. Live Free. Vindver is a jazz pianist who co-wrote 10 of the 11 tracks on Kanye West’s 2020 album Jesus Is King. He also co-penned the song More Than Words on Little Mix’s 2018 album LM5 and various tracks on albums by Ricky Martin, Mariah Carey, Missy Elliott and Josh Groban.
The parent album, What Are We Waiting For? was released in January 2022 and Unsung Hero was the promotional single lifted from it. The movie, which was based on the song and is just under two hours long, was released in April 2024 and carried the tag line, ‘ A mother’s faith stands against all odds and inspires her husband and children to hold onto theirs. Based on a remarkable true story.’ The accompanying promo video for the single contained home movie footage as well as photographs from the duo’s childhood.
The movie wasn’t greatly received with a couple of very lacklustre reviews, but as Katie Walsh at the L.A Times put it, “It’s a humble story, one with the capacity to inspire in its simple message of perseverance.”