Mat and Savanna Shaw didn’t expect to go viral. And they certainly didn’t expect they’d be riding a wave of success two years later, but here they are, in late July, releasing their fifth album.
That’s five albums in two years.
And this new album, “Happy Like That,” might just be their favorite yet, with three original songs, and covers of classics like Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” and “When You Believe” from “The Prince of Egypt.”
“We have poured our hearts into this album, and really hope you love it,” the father-daughter duo from Kaysville, Utah, recently shared on Facebook.
All of the tracks on “Happy Like That” carry significance for the Shaws, who will share more about the album release and the stories behind their song selections in a live chat on social media Friday at 3 p.m. MDT.
The first song the Shaws released from the new album is “When You Believe,” which they strategically filmed at Utah’s Spiral Jetty — “a swirling, 7,000-ton landmark ... in northern Utah, built of salt crystal, mud and basalt rocks, that stretches more than 1,500 feet into the Great Salt Lake,” the Deseret News previously reported.
“We filmed this at the Spiral Jetty in Utah to show that when you’re in the middle of life — from an earthly perspective — it might appear chaotic and without much purpose,” the Shaws shared on Facebook. “However, when you zoom out and look at things from a heavenly perspective, you see that what you thought was chaotic was actually a beautiful work of art after all.”
The official musical video, which was released in June, has already garnered more than 1 million views on YouTube.
The Shaws have also already released videos for “Here Comes the Sun,” “I Can Only Imagine” and “Both Sides Now,” noting that the latter song is their arranger, Stephen Nelson’s, “favorite song of all time.”
“In life, people will experience the same things in such vastly different ways,” the Shaws said when they released “Both Sides Now.” “Possibly the most beautiful reality of the human experience is that we gain so much perspective, patience and wisdom with time and age. We can appreciate life for what it is; for all the ups and downs and in-betweens.”
In addition to the new album, the Shaws are also performing at the Sandy Amphitheater on Aug. 6 — and there’s a livestream option for fans outside of Utah.
Although the Shaws still have a hard time wrapping their heads around the past two years of their lives, they plan to keep riding the wave of their unexpected success and performing for their fans.
“We’ll just kind of see where it goes,” Mat Shaw previously told the Deseret News. “But we feel the responsibility of using this platform to share hope and spread joy. That’s meaningful and fulfilling and rewarding work to be involved in.
“And for us, if we lost all our fans tomorrow we’d still sing, because we love it,” he added. “We’d love it just the same.”