Mallary Hope is a rising star in country music and now’s your chance to get to know her!
THE STORY BEHIND “LOVE LIVES ON”:
“I was having a conversation with my sister, Atlanta. She and her husband, DJ, were high school sweethearts but when they graduated she joined the Air Force and he joined the Army. They reconnected a few years later when they were both stationed in Germany and soon after they were married. When she was pregnant, I asked her if the baby was planned, or if he was a surprise since they knew DJ was scheduled to be deployed to Iraq. She looked at me and said, ‘Mallary, we’re both in the military so you constantly have that fear that you could lose your loved one to war. Anything can happen. It would be the worst thing in the world to lose my husband. But if we shared a child together, I would have someone there that I could look at for the rest of my life and be reminded of this great love that we share. So he was definitely planned.’ I remember thinking, ‘There is a song in that somewhere.’
The next day I had a writing session with Matthew West and Shane Stevens. I picked up the guitar and said, ‘Can I just sing you this idea that I have? I don’t know where we can go with it.’ I told them about the conversation my sister and I had and sang, ‘I reached for you this morning, woke up with empty arms. Once again, it’s sinking in, how far away you are.’ I said, ‘I feel like the hook of the song needs to be that love lives on.’ Within 30 minutes, we had the entire song written and we were all crying. It was a gift.”Country Music Photo Gallery