Josh Lovelace offers a beacon of romantic hope on his reassuring retro-pop single and video Lovelight — premiering exclusively on Tinnitist.
Taken from the NEEDTOBREATHE keyboardist’s imminent solo album Shelters — which lands Friday, Oct. 25 — Lovelight will take your breath away with its sweet sincerity and timeless message of devotion and salvation. Musically, the track spans decades and styles with its richly reverberating, lushly layered blend of insistently chugging guitars, chiming keyboards and pumping drums — all buoying and bolstering Lovelace’s soaring, sandy vocals and the song’s anthemic, fist-pumping chorus. Lyrically, however, Lovelight is as classic as they come, with heartwarming lyrics that find Lovelace standing steadfast and true, amid a lover’s uncertainty and reluctance:
“Honey, all you’ve ever wanted was someone you can trust
But you go looking for excuses to avoid the rush
You take the path of least resistance and try to walk away
But I know that we can make it, I know that we can make it
You say that you never felt good enough
You get close but you’re always gonna wanna run
Baby in the middle of the cold, cold night
I’ll be there I’ll be your lovelight, lovelight.”
“Lovelight is my ode to some of the music and sounds I loved growing up,” Lovelace explains. “I wanted to have a song on the record that felt like a mixed bag of Bryan Adams and Richard Marx met with Bleachers and The War on Drugs. It’s a really fun pop song that hopefully reminds us all that we need each other. Even when we can’t see it sometimes, there are people around us who will carry the torch and be a light for us in the dark.”
Illustrated by a vibrant, vintage-style video reminiscent of public-access TV, the chiming, hopeful Lovelight truly reflects the central theme of Shelters: Finding ports in the storm and anchoring yourself to those who care. “I feel like I have people in my life that are my shelters — they’re telling me that in the middle of the darkest night, ‘I’ll be there,’ ” Lovelace says. “Those are people that just really dug in with me in the trenches. It’s a reminder to myself to recognize that — how lucky I am.
“It’s so hard to be human,” he adds with a wry laugh. “And that is what makes it great, too. Because if it was easy, it wouldn’t be worth fighting for. That’s what this record is all about. It’s me forgiving myself and giving myself some grace for not having it all figured out quite yet.”
Lovelace’s battle with his religious upbringing is another constant throughout the album, from the ethereal High Throne to straight-ahead rocker Praying Wrong. The folky Miracles is a rumination on how young minds are able to trust and hope — and an entreaty to return to those days. “As I’ve gotten older, I don’t really believe all the things that I believed when I was young,” Lovelace says. “But at the same time, I wish I had the confidence that I had when I was a kid.”
Shelters also digs into more earthly trials — the honeyed Flames & Smoke sees Lovelace muddling through his anxiety diagnosis, while the fluttery Not the Best Version of Myself (Right Now) echoes a sentiment we can all relate to, and I Stopped Drinking Yesterday is about trying to put down the bottle and open your eyes. “You can’t just automatically change and be who you want to be,” Lovelace elaborates. “That’s what this record is all about. It’s me forgiving myself and giving myself some grace for not having it all figured out quite yet… It’s a process.”
That process is conveyed on Shelters with songs that vacillate between self-doubt, angst, forgiveness and — ultimately — hope. Lovelace is a proud work in progress: Whether it’s quitting drinking to be more present for his kids, quelling panic attacks before stepping on stage, or just figuring out his beliefs, after growing up as the son of a preacher. Through all this turmoil he’s had his touchstones: Loved ones, friends and of course, music. “The reason why I call the album Shelters instead of just Shelter is because there’s not a one-stop shop for salvation,” he says. “Different people became shelters for me — and also my work. There’s beauty in that.” Friends who helped build Shelters include NEEDTOBREATHE bandmate Tyler Burkum, Griffin Goldsmith (Dawes), Emily Retsas (Phoebe Bridgers), Sam Getz (Welshly Arms), Aaron Sterling and more.
Born and raised in Tennessee, Lovelace grew up making music. He’s been a musician basically since birth, fed on a steady diet of rock, soul, gospel, folk, Elton John, Bob Dylan — anyone with a story to tell. Lovelace has been touring in bands since high school ended. “I’ve been on the road most of my life, playing music and trying to keep the rock ’n’ roll dream alive. It’s what I’ve always done,” he says.
He joined the Grammy-nominated NEEDTOBREATHE in 2011, hitting the road with them for the first time as an opener for Taylor Swift. While he has co-written songs for the band, he’s also documented his life on his own recordings. He released his first solo album — a collection of folky songs for kids (and adults) called Young Folk — in 2017, and followed it up with Growing Up in 2019 and Moonwalking in 2022.
Like many musicians, he became more introspective during the pandemic, as he struggled with waning relationships, new anxiety, and all the uncertainty that the time engendered. “When you’re in a band, or when you’re on a stage, people think that you have it all together, or they at least hope that you are putting the most honest version of yourself out there at all times,” he says. “I’d have to keep an anxiety pill in my pocket when I was going on stage in order to just get through the show some nights.”
Working on the album, then, was like therapy. In 2022, he took a solo trip to Roslyn, Wash. — where one of his comfort shows, Northern Exposure, was filmed — to finally put Shelters’ 11 songs down on tape. “It was kind of a watershed thing for me,” he says. “I was able to really reckon with some of the things that have happened to me, whether it’s my fault or not, and start to deal with those things and not keep them hidden anymore.” Amen to that.
Watch the video for Lovelight above, hear more from Shelters below, pre-order the album HERE and join Josh Lovelace on his website, Facebook and Instagram.
