V180
V180

Stars Go Dim was originally formed in 2007 by Christian pop musician and composer Chris Cleveland. After years at the head of a secular band, Chris earned success in the Christian genre with his self-titled first album. He also spent more than a decade leading worship at Tulsa’s Asbury United Methodist Church.

Chris’s songs have generated hundreds of millions of streams, and he has collaborated with many of the most well-known Christian artists in the world, including Justin Bieber, John Mayer, Lauren Daigle and For King and Country.

The band’s most recent project, Grace In The Wilderness, was released early in 2022. As well as touring the world and performing, Chris also continues to write songs that many of the biggest Christian artists and worship bands of today record.

Embrace Love

Chris says that while the last couple of years of the pandemic have been difficult, he’s been intentional in not getting overwhelmed by the enormity of it. He’s been enjoying more family time, and believes it’s important to embrace and love life rather than let circumstances dictate what we do.

Chris is excited for everyone to finally hear the songs on his new album. ‘I write a lot of worship stuff for other people as well,’ says Chris. ‘There are songs on this record that other worship artists have cut that I wanted to do my own versions of. Hopefully it really represents the breadth of what I can do.’

For Chris, Grace In The Wilderness has been a more personal project. ‘We were more deliberate in trying to put this idea of pop music and Christian lyric together,’ says Chris. ‘In Christian music, there’s not a lot of others doing what I’m doing. But another one of the things I wanted to do was to be able to play it live.’

Chris believes his song, You Are Loved, contains an important message that people need to hear. ‘I want people to know that their life has value and meaning. They have worth and they’re loved. That’s really what all my songs are about.’

Ability Through Disability

One of the big challenges Chris has faced is being born with a tumor in his left ear. ‘I’ve had a bunch of surgeries on it, and my mechanical functioning to get sound waves from outside of my head into my head doesn’t work. I’m deaf in my left ear but I’ve never known any different.’

A lot of people have come alongside Chris to pray for healing over the years. ‘There have been moments when I just felt so bad that healing didn’t come,’ he says. ‘But I think the bigger testimony for me is not the healing, but the ability through the disability. It’s amazing what God can do through a circumstance that seems impossible.’

Chris is grateful for God’s presence in his life, particularly during the past 2 years of the pandemic but also for how it influences his music. ‘God is present and faithful, even in the hard stuff. We still have to go into the wilderness and sometimes we like to gloss over that,’ he says.

‘But the beauty of a walk with Christ is that He’ll go through those times with us.’

Listen to Chris’s full V180 interview below, or to download his new music click here.