for KING + COUNTRY's Luke Smallbone has revealed that the duo's most ambitious film project created unexpected tension behind the scenes-but ultimately became one of his family's most meaningful stories of reconciliation.
During a new interview with GodTube Music, Smallbone discussed the release of the duo's fifth studio album, The Most Beautiful Colours, as well as DRUMMER BOY, the musical film that he and his collaborators have spent eight years developing.
The film follows two brothers who find themselves on opposing sides of the Revolutionary War. Although Luke and Joel Smallbone never faced a literal battlefield, Luke admitted that the long creative process produced its own painful conflict between family members.
Luke said that he, Joel and their brother Ben, who co-directed the film, became "relationally frayed" while developing its music and screenplay. About a year ago, the brothers finally confronted the strain and agreed that they needed to put their differences behind them.
"What you see on display in the film, we've had to actually live in real time between brothers," Luke explained. "Obviously, we didn't end up on opposite sides of a war, but sometimes relationally, you end up like you're feeling like you're battling some sort of war."
The experience appears to have changed the way Luke measures the film's success. Box-office results matter, but he suggested that restoring the brothers' relationships has already given the project a deeper purpose.
"Whether or not the film is successful or not-and I hope it is-to be able to have the gift of being able to make this with people that you love and practice what you preach a little bit has been really thrilling," he said.
Luke described the reconciliation as "one of the great redemption stories" of their lives. The confession gives DRUMMER BOY an intensely personal dimension: a film about divided brothers was completed by brothers who had to overcome their own divisions.
The theme of God rebuilding broken lives also runs through The Most Beautiful Colours. One of the album's most surprising collaborations is "my mosaic," featuring Jessica Simpson. Luke said Simpson brought a scrapbook to a songwriting session and spoke candidly about the pressures, complications and brokenness she had experienced.
According to Luke, Simpson compared her life to a shattered mosaic that God had graciously begun putting back together. That image resonated so powerfully with Luke, Joel and songwriter Josh Kerr that they wrote the song specifically for her.
When the track later resurfaced during the recording process, the brothers initially hesitated because it was Simpson's story, not theirs. They eventually invited her to tell that story on their album, with the duo singing the verses and Simpson delivering the chorus.
"This is her song. This is her story," Luke said. "We wanted to just really honor some of the things that she's walked through and how she's walked through it."
The album also includes "ever & ever before," a love song featuring Joel and Luke's wives, Moriah and Courtney. Luke revealed that the idea unexpectedly came to him in the shower while he and Courtney were celebrating the anniversary of their engagement.
Meanwhile, the title track was inspired partly by John Burke's book Imagine Heaven. The song imagines the beauty of eternity and asks why Christians do not speak-or sing-about heaven more often.
Together, the album and film point toward the same Christian conviction: broken pieces and strained relationships do not have to remain beyond repair. For the Smallbone brothers, DRUMMER BOY became more than another major production. It forced them to live the reconciliation they hoped to place on the screen.
DRUMMER BOY is scheduled to arrive in theaters on November 6, while The Most Beautiful Colours is available now.
