Your Love Broke Thru

Album: Love Broke Thru (1976)
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Songfacts®:

  • Phil Keaggy is a guitar virtuoso who has been acknowledged for years as one of the world's leading "fingerpicking" guitarists. He has released over 30 albums in both the CCM and mainstream markets. This tune, written by Keith Green, Randy Stonehill and Todd Fishkind, is considered Keaggy's signature song.
  • At the time Keaggy was recording Love Broke Thru, aided by the production skills of 2nd Chapter of Acts' Buck Herring, he was living in a Christian commune in upstate New York. Keaggy recalled in CCM Magazine presents 100 Greatest Songs In Christian Music how he came across this tune: "I was working on my second solo album with Buck as the producer and engineer, and we were sitting around sorting through songs and discussing our time frame. So in bounces this guy, Keith Green, and it was great. He was so full of life, full of Jesus, full of song."

    Herring introduced Keaggy to Green and the smiling songwriter said he had a new song that he wanted to play for the singer/guitarist. Keaggy recounted: "We went into one of the extra bedrooms and he sat down at the piano and played 'Love Broke Thru,' smiling the whole time and looking directly into my eyes. Buck told me that he really thought I should do it on my new album, and I said, 'I'd love to - what a beautiful song!' So I did. We went in and cut the track and then did the vocals. Keith personally taught me the song; he wrote it all out for me and we actually used his handwritten lyric sheet taped up by the microphone when I sang it. It's a really good memory. I had such a great deal of respect for him as an artist, and I still do today."

    Green went on to have a successful career as a Christian recording artist, often with a radical message in his songs. Tragically he was killed in a plane crash in 1982, along with two of his four children.

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