At 70, Sandi Patty sings ‘The Voice I Have Now,’ plans new album

(RNS)—A decade after her farewell tour, multi-Grammy-winning Christian singer Sandi Patty is out with a new song and has plans for another album next year.

Patty, who turned 70 in July, said the song, “The Voice I Have Now,” was an ideal match for her vocal chords and her station in life.

“It’s the perfect song for someone sort of looking back over their career, looking back over life, and realizing God has been faithful all this time,” Patty said in an interview on Wednesday, Aug. 19, two days before the song’s release. 

“And so, as I sing that song, I definitely am grateful.”

Patty, contemporary Christian music’s most awarded female singer, has won 40 Dove Awards from the Gospel Music Association in addition to five Grammys. The 2004 Gospel Music Hall of Fame inductee said her voice is now used to mentor women in her life—from young female singers to her daughters and a growing number of grandchildren she shares with Don Peslis, her husband of more than three decades.

Patty, a soprano who began singing at age 2 in the Church of God (Anderson, Ind.) church where her father was a minister, acknowledges, “I don’t have access to some of the notes that I used to, but I have access to the deeper meaning of the story” of the songs of faith she sings.

She spoke to Religion News Service about aging, her favorite artists, and heading back on the road again.

The interview was edited for length and clarity.

How does it feel to reach 70?

I realize—you know what?—it’s coming, whether I embrace it or not right now. It’s weird. So, I’m just embracing it and celebrating it. And from here on out, I feel like it’s just all bonus years.

I want to ask you about your song, “The Voice I Have Now.” Those very words can be interpreted in different ways. So, what do they mean to you personally when you sing “you find that God was planning all this time for the voice I have now”?

One of the things that comes with age is I have the opportunity to have more years seeing God faithful and looking back and counting those moments that have shaped me, to allow me to have the voice I have now. I think sometimes people think when I talk about the voice I use that I’m only talking about a singing voice. 

And I feel like in this season, it’s a lot more: the voice where I can speak into some younger generation, the voice where I can help worship teams and vocal teams, the voice that I can mentor and share, and hopefully say: “Listen, if you’re going to make mistakes, at least make some new ones. Learn from mine.” And that’s when I say, “I’m grateful for that voice that I have now.”

The lyrics also recall times when “there were doubts to crush and dues to pay, but we paid them all and how.” What do those words bring to mind?

In 70 years, you have a lot of really great things. In 70 years, you have some really hard chapters as well. And walking through a divorce and walking into a blended family—which has now been part of my life for 31 years—those things do come at a cost. 

And sometimes internally I still feel like I need to pay some of those dues. But we’re realizing that we paid them all and how, whether that was individually, with our kids, or in interviews I did at the time, or talking with people one-on-one, or lower record sales or whatever that may be. 

And yet, I’m able to look back 31, 32 years and see how God has, brick by brick by brick, begun to build something even better and new. He promises to make all things new. That doesn’t mean we skip lightly over the hard. But we give him the broken pieces, and by his love, he makes them whole.

Do you have plans beyond this single, such as an album?

What I’ve got completed is a brand-new record that will be out in February of 2027. It’ll have 12 songs on it. And it’s called “Back to Love.”

Not only am I getting to travel with Bill and Gloria Gaither again, but their record label, Gaither Music Group, has taken on this project. The songs on there are some songs that Bill and Gloria have written. 

I’ll tell you a little fun secret. At 90 years old, Bill Gaither sang a duet with me on this. There is some reimagining of some songs I did early on in my career, like “Love in Any Language,” and “We Shall Behold Him.”

The video that accompanies “The Voice I Have Now” shows snippets on a screen of you standing on stage in front of large crowds. Do you miss those glory days, as the song calls those times?

No, I don’t. It was such an unusual personal time. It’s hard for me to reconcile all of that with knowing what I would greet when I would walk off the stage. And so, I grieve that because I didn’t fully enjoy those times. So, that’s about as raw as I can be there.

How would you describe Christian music now as it compares to what people viewed it as at the height of your career in the ’80s and ’90s? What do you think has changed?

What makes Christian music—what it is—is the lyric content, is the message.

When I started, there was contemporary Christian music, there was a little bit of rock, there was the Southern gospel, all with the same message, speaking to those people, their audience, that love that style of music.

Now what I love about Christian music: There’s such incredible variety of personal taste. So, there will be people who will not come to my concert who will go to a Forrest Frank concert. Hopefully they’ll get the same message. My kids love Forrest Frank, my grandkids.

So, what kinds of music and particular artists or composers of any genre—not necessarily any of the subgenres of Christian music—do you like to listen to?

Because I deal with lyrics so much, I find when I listen, I listen to instrumental. There’s a station that my husband and I like to listen to on SiriusXM—Spa—because it’s just all instrumental, gentle, and it’s pleasing to our souls.

I love Natalie Grant. The XM station The Message, it just gives me an idea of what’s happening in Christian music these days. In contemporary Christian music, Lauren Daigle, Charity Gayle, Elevation Worship, those are some of my absolute favorite things to listen to as well.

Last fall, the Museum of Christian & Gospel Music opened in Nashville, and it includes a room of dresses worn by you, Vestal Goodman, CeCe Winans, and Jenn Johnson. What is that like, and how did you choose?

I have to tell you I felt really proud, because we pulled some of those dresses out of the storage unit. And I put it on before I sent it down there to Nashville. I was like, I can still wear this thing. And so, that was fun. We gave the museum a couple of options, and they went with one I wore on “The Tonight Show [with Johnny Carson].”

You’ve long been known for the song “We Shall Behold Him,” written by Dottie Rambo. At this stage of your life, does it have particular resonance?

I have always been so deeply privileged to have been handed this, as Dottie calls it, “her baby.” And she said, “You took my baby and you dressed her up so pretty.” And I got to sing that at Dottie’s homegoing. At this season, as it is reimagined in its arrangement, it is much more reflective.           

But it allows me to kind of imagine, picturing my mom and my dad, my brother Mike, who are in heaven, who have had the experience of seeing [God] face to face. I don’t even have an idea what that was like. But when I sing it now, I know people on the other side who’ve experienced it.

You mentioned this upcoming album in 2027. Are there more projects ahead, or are you ready to keep on being retired?

I don’t know at this juncture, as we’re talking today, if there will be other projects. I think we just need to see how the project is received. The songs mean so very, very much to me. And I’m looking forward to performing them live at concerts around the country.

You’re going to be back on the road again?

Some. Whereas I used to be on the road maybe 75, 80 percent of the time, now that’s flip-flopped. And so, maybe I’m on the road 20, 25 percent of the time.