Selah
Whether they’re singing time-honored hymns or offering their own take on popular songs like Secret Garden’s “You Raise Me Up” and Rascal Flatts’ “Bless the Broken Road,” Selah knows how to carry a tune in a way that really resonates with the hearts of the masses.
Originally consisting of Allan Hall, Nicol Sponberg, and Nicol’s brother, Todd Smith, Selah has earned a reputation for its dynamic vocals on songs that minister to the broken and discouraged. The group’s ability to open up and become vulnerable by sharing their personal struggles and shortcomings has made them even more relatable from stage. After Nicol left the group to spend more time with her family, Amy Perry took her place and fit right into the mold that Selah had formed.
“At many shows, I’ve shared about my struggle with my weight,” Amy says. “I had a boyfriend who told me I was too overweight to marry, and how I lost a bunch of weight for the wrong reasons. God has really allowed me to have this platform with Selah where I can say, ‘I’m a real girl, I have real problems—look at me, I’m clearly not thin—but I’m okay with who I am, and it’s taken me this many years to get here.’”
While Selah had impacted countless lives, the songs they sang brought healing to themselves during the next chapter of their lives. The band was hit with tragedy with the loss of Todd’s daughter, Audrey Caroline, who faced several life-threatening health conditions while still in the womb, as well as the death Nicol’s infant son Luke to SIDS.
Considering the circumstances, it would’ve been understandable if Selah had decided not to finish its next project—or call it quits altoghether. But as it turns out, the album they’d be working on, a collection of hymns titled You Deliver Me, actually ministered to them.
“It was amazing what songs we had picked—obviously not knowing what was going to happen,” Allan shares. “Hymns are so strong, so well written. They have lasted for hundreds of years for a reason. A lot of them were written out of places of pain and sorrow, yet there’s so much hope in them, and that resonates with people.”
