Few acts in Christian music have built the kind of resume that Joel and Luke Smallbone have amassed over the past decade and a half. With more than 5.8 billion career streams, four Grammy wins, and sold-out tours spanning four continents, for KING + COUNTRY have long since outgrown any single genre label. On September 18th, the Australian-born brothers add another chapter to that story with “the most beautiful colours,” their fifth studio album, and one that finds them leaning further into collaboration, family, and the kind of large-scale sound that has become their signature.
“We took a year at home to experience the most beautiful colours (yes, with a u), & it became one of the most profound seasons of our lives,” Joel and Luke share in their album note. “There are certainly times in life to roll up your sleeves, to work hard and to go to war for the things you believe in. But there are also seasons to be still,” the brothers share. “This record isn’t a refusal, denial, or a sugar-coating of any of the pain & hardships we’re all facing, but rather a holy invitation to a defiant hope & a gentle reminder of the miraculous in our everyday lives.”
The album’s title track sets the tone for a record less interested in tidy resolutions than in holding multiple truths at once: that life is messy and beautiful in equal measure, and that faith doesn’t erase difficulty so much as sit alongside it. It’s a theme the duo returns to throughout the project’s tracklist, whether they’re singing about global unity or something as intimate as a father’s legacy.
Lead single “world on fire,” featuring Taylor Hill, arrives as the album’s most immediate calling card, a big, propulsive statement piece that finds the brothers’ vocals paired against a backdrop built for arenas. But it’s the newer single, “what if I told you?,” that may end up being the album’s emotional center. Co-credited with MŌRIAH and Courtney Smallbone, the Smallbone brothers’ wives, the song was written, by the duo’s own account, from personal experience, and it wrestles directly with insecurity and self-worth. Its core message is simple but pointed: other people’s opinions don’t get the final say on who you are.
Elsewhere, the guest list expands the album’s palette considerably. Jessica Simpson joins for “my mosaic,” a song about identity that fits neatly into the record’s broader preoccupation with how people are made whole from disparate pieces. “miracle” pushes in a more explicitly worship-oriented direction, built on the idea that transformation and hope are still available in the present tense, not just in scripture or memory. Cuts like “thank God” and “loved” round out the project’s exploration of gratitude, while listeners who pick up the physical or downloadable editions will find three additional songs recorded in Ireland, a detail that hints at the international scope the duo have been chasing since their earliest tours.
Taken as a whole, “the most beautiful colours” plays like a summary statement for where for KING + COUNTRY are as artists nearly fifteen years into their career: still capable of the widescreen, radio-ready songwriting that’s produced 15 number-one hits, but increasingly willing to let collaborators, family included, shape the record alongside them.
It’s also worth noting that this release lands not long after the passing of Dolly Parton, an artist the Smallbones know well. In 2019, Parton joined the duo for a remix of their hit “God Only Knows,” a pairing that pushed the song onto the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in the group’s career. With Parton’s death still fresh, that collaboration has taken on a bittersweet resonance for fans revisiting the duo’s catalog this fall.