For a guy who once turned “It Had to Be You” into a pop-jazz Trojan horse that smuggled New Orleans swagger onto wedding dance floors for three decades straight, Harry Connick Jr. doesn’t seem too concerned about writing hits anymore. Not that he sounds bitter—more like post-genre, post-fame, post-pandemic. He made a record called Alone With My Faith during the darkest stretch of COVID, and if you’re expecting a glossy inspirational set with soaring gospel choirs and a neatly ironed shirt on the cover… well, parts of that are true. But Connick’s version of devotion is less Joel Osteen, more haunted blender metaphor.
“We all had down time,” he says with that easy Louisiana drawl. “And after the first week or so, you’re like, what do we do? I decided to record some songs that felt appropriate… songs that I needed to record.”
It’s not strictly a gospel record. It’s not strictly anything. Some tracks are old church standards. Others are originals. Some feel like he’s reaching toward God. Others sound like he’s arguing with Him. And he’s fine with that tension. “Sometimes I felt a strong connection with God,” he says. “And sometimes I felt lost, depressed, uncertain. I questioned my faith. I felt like the connection had been broken. Sometimes.”
This is Connick in his raw, unshaven, pandemic-stuck mode—running lines on faith, free will, and being a "wretch" like it’s a late-night bourbon conversation you wandered into. On the title track, he sings “I know who I am” like a mantra, equal parts confident and desperate.
“Do I know who I am in this context?” he muses. “Am I a person of faith that can call upon that faith? I know what I believe. I may not always get there. I may fail in my personal quest to be more patient, more loving, more understanding. But I know who I am.”
Even the old standbys like “Amazing Grace” come in crooked. Not in performance—he’s still Harry Connick Jr., after all—but in arrangement, tone, intent. He dissects the lyrics like he’s prepping for a theology final. Amazing? Define that. Grace? Whose? Wretch? Absolutely.
“You think, did it save me? Am I saved? Of course I’m a wretch and of course it saved me.” And then he laughs. The kind of laugh that knows it’s coming from a guy who once acted opposite Sandra Bullock in a romcom and now cries in the studio while singing about the crucifixion.
That emotional collision reaches its apex on “The Old Rugged Cross,” which starts not with a melody, but with what sounds like the aftermath of a war. Chimes. Dissonance. Desert air. It’s deeply weird—and deeply felt.
“I just started beating this chime with, like, a—I don't own a mallet, so I don’t know, something,” he shrugs. “And I started adding synths, and melodies that didn’t have anything to do with Old Rugged Cross but had to do with what would I feel if I was walking through the desert and came across a real crucifixion cross. Like, bam, what am I looking at?”
It’s not avant-garde. Or maybe it is. Doesn’t matter.
“It's not perfect. It’s flawed. It's a little rambunctious. And that’s how I do it,” he says. “It may not work for you because you don’t know the context. But for me, that’s Harry.”
He says it like a dare. Or a shrug. Or maybe a prayer.
And of course there’s a movie in the mix. There always is with Connick. Fear of Rain, a psychological thriller where he plays the father of a schizophrenic daughter, dropped quietly around the same time. “It’s heavy stuff,” he says, praising the performances of Madison Iseman and Katherine Heigl. “But it’s also accurate. It’s real.” He talks about it with the same mix of humility and intensity he reserves for grace and gospel harmonies.
Would he ever score a film? You bet.
“If Spielberg called and said, I want you to do a thriller, I’d be like—yes. Absolutely,” he says. “That ‘Rugged Cross’ intro? That was basically my soundtrack demo reel.”
And if not? Well, there’s theater stuff. There’s TV stuff. Maybe some touring, “eventually.” He’s not in a rush. He wants people to get vaccinated. He wants to do it right. That blend of caution and conviction is sort of the whole theme here.
He circles back to his father—his “rock-solid” father whose faith never wavers. “He calls me ‘Thomas’ sometimes,” Connick says, laughing. “You know, Doubting Thomas. But I like that. Because I know he was there too.”
Which might be the point of Alone With My Faith. Not that Harry Connick Jr. has it all figured out. But that he’s willing to stand in the middle of it, chimes in hand, lost and found and somewhere in between, and just... play.
And if it sounds a little messy?
“So am I.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
