“A Mighty Long Way” – Norman Hutchins

“A Mighty Long Way”
Norman Hutchins
IR Music Group (release date: September 27, 2024)

By Robert M. Marovich

Trading truisms with a full-throated choir, Bishop Norman Hutchins reminds the listener in his effervescent new single that God has brought his people a mighty long way. It’s a sound message to carry into a new year.

At one point, Hutchins, perhaps best known for his holiday perennial “Emmanuel,” quotes from “Amazing Grace” as a way of referencing his own testimony. The single is easy-going, churchy, and choir-driven, evocative of gospel music popular during the 1990s and early 2000s. Though it ends seemingly too soon, it gets enough of its message across within gospel radio’s narrow limits.