| Last year music veteran Candi Staton assistant solicited songs from aspiring songwriters for her latest CD. Out of the 300 songs they received, the one that stuck out for Staton was the bouncy praise and worship track entitled “Butterfly.” Written by a Dallas , TX area singer/songwriter named Shonna Stallworth, the song speaks of praising God without inhibition. “Breaking free from the cocoon that’s been holding me,” Staton sings in the song. “No longer bound by my fears you see and I’m walking in liberty. Coming to a new place and destiny and I’m thankful you’ve chosen me, emerging like a butterfly with no limits on me. Oh Lord, oh Lord. I come with my hands up raised. It's you that I’ve come to praise. I worship and adore you because this is the day.”
“I immediately loved the song when I heard it,” says Staton. “The way that the writer wrote it is very creative to compare the way we live our life to a butterfly. I feel that way myself. For years, I lived my life based on the way other people wanted me to live rather than the way God wanted me to live it. I had to break out of that cocoon and fly myself.”
The song is featured on Staton’s first praise and worship CD, I Will Sing My Praise to You (Emtro Gospel. Aside from penning half of the songs such as the stately "Just Because You Are/I Will Sing My Praise to You" and the funky "Jesus Makes My Morning Sing"; Staton, who usually writes all of her own songs, performs songs by artists such as Israel & New Breed, Matt Redman and Paul Balouche.
Staton grew up in gospel music. As a teenager she sang with the Jewel Gospel Trio in the 1950s and toured with Sam Cooke and Mahalia Jackson. In 1969, she began a string of Top Ten hits for Capitol Records such as “Stand By Your Man” and the Grammy-nominated “In the Ghetto.” She then moved to Warner Bros. Records where she enjoyed disco smashes such as “Victim” and the 1976 million-seller “Young Hearts Run Free.” In 1983, her first gospel album Make Me An Instrument peaked at #7 on the Billboard gospel charts and garnered her third Grammy Award nomination. Various remixes of Staton’s gospel song “You Got the Love” have hit the Top Ten of the British pop charts in 1991, 1997 and 1996. The song has sold 3 million copies worldwide and been featured in the finale episode of HBO’s “Sex in the City” TV series. In the intervening years, she recorded a dozen other gospel albums and hosted the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) weekly series “Say Yes” (originally “New Direction”) from 1986 to 2004 |
