Exploring the Gospel Through the Lens of Grief

NATALIE BERGMAN DID NOT anticipate a particular response from Christians to her first solo album, Mercy. Released in May 2021, it was a departure from Bergman’s work with her brother in the duo Wild Belle, offering a gentler sound and deep lyrics. Yet Mercy has been hailed as a masterpiece that explores gospel through the lens of grief. Christians, particularly millennials and Gen Zers who long ago grew sick of Air1 and K-LOVE, have celebrated the work.

But Bergman wasn’t thinking about listener reaction before releasing Mercy. She wrote, produced, and mixed the album entirely by herself to process the grief after her father and stepmother were killed by a drunk driver. She said she felt “protected” in its release.

“I knew—after I put the album out—that I was going to have some sort of feedback on [Mercy] from people that are believers ... but I went into this with no fear,” Bergman told Sojourners before her March performance at Songbyrd Music House in Washington, D.C. Citing right-wing trucker protests and other authoritarian manifestations of Christianity, Bergman said she realized later it was a “kind of courageous thing to [release] this body of work, because of the political climate and because of the history that religion has.”

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Mercy and the follow-up EP, Keep Those Teardrops from Falling, are fundamentally gospel in every sense of the term. The music and visuals that accompany it are rooted in the sounds and aesthetics of the 1960s and ’70s. The music is filtered and affected, the vocals are smooth and layered with uncommon harmonies. For those who’ve been reading this magazine since The Post-American days, Bergman will feel as familiar as Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon, albeit with a 21st-century spin.

Bergman cites John Coltrane, Sister Corita Kent, and Bob Marley as artists who inspired her work and modeled sharing “the good news” of love. Bergman also said she grew up on soul and rock music and cited Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson, and Etta James as regulars in her household.

At Bergman’s D.C. performance, concertgoers spoke about theology podcasts, deconstruction, and youth groups. They said Bergman’s music was “refreshing” and something they wouldn’t be embarrassed to show their friends. One younger attendee told Sojourners that Bergman presented God as both accessible and reliable and that that had helped their own faith journey.

God as friend is a key theme in Bergman’s work. From the opening track of Mercy, where she sings “When you are scared, reach out your hand / Talk to the Lord, talk to the Lord / If you are sad, He’ll dry your tears / Talk to the Lord, talk to the Lord,” to the song “You’ve Got a Friend in Jesus,” Bergman sings of a God big enough to conquer the darkest demons and amiable enough to soothe the bitterest tear.

Reuniting with her late father, the lens through which her gospel story is told, might be hard to swallow for some Christian audiences who have jettisoned eye-on-the-sky hymns that ignore the plight of others. But Bergman’s dream of heaven isn’t birthed out of an ignorance of suffering: It comes directly from it.

“The Gallows,” the eighth song on Mercy, looks grief directly in the face. “I had no song to sing at all / Till He left this world / Though I am showered in despair / I am filled with hope,” Bergman sings. “Death has touched me once again / And buried in the ground / He is the man I love the most / I’ll see Him when I get home.”

As Bergman waits for the day when she’ll see her loved ones again, she praises God’s presence and power. Several songs would seem at home in a worship setting: They are filled with adoration for God, simple, and pleasantly repetitive.

“You will lift me up when I am blue / When I feel lost, I come to You,” Bergman recites in the opening verse of “He Will Lift You Up Higher,” and the title’s promise is repeated throughout the song.

In other songs, Bergman is a storyteller. Ranging from the ballad “Sweet Mary,” written for her stepmother, to the heartbreak of the piano-led “Last Farewell,” about the night she learned of her father and stepmother’s deaths, her songs invite listeners into intimate moments. Those moments belonged to Bergman first, but she is more than willing to share.

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Bergman also tells stories about her romances. The song “I’m Not Your Puppet” might seem like an outlier in the span of Bergman’s solo work. She told Sojourners she feared the breakup track is a misfit among songs glorifying God. And while crooning about freedom from a manipulative ex is not overtly testimony, Bergman weaves religious imagery into the song—“hallelujah,” she sings in the chorus; “amen, amen, amen,” she harmonizes in the outro. And Bergman’s “good news” is preached on the track: “I’m not your puppet anymore / This is the sweetest thing I’ve tasted / I should have said goodbye long ago / I want to hold onto this feeling” could easily extend beyond romantic liaisons.

With Mercy and Keep Those Teardrops from Falling being such situational projects, it’s fair to wonder how much spirituality will pervade her future work. Bergman acknowledged that Mercy was a very “conceptual, personal” album, but that doesn’t mean future projects will lack spiritual tones.

“I’ve always had spiritual references in my music. I have been singing about God, and I have been singing about Jesus, in some way or another,” Bergman said. “I think that will continue for the rest of my life, because my faith is never going to die.”