Jamie N Commons’ singular voice is filled with weary emotion.
Oh lord live inside me
Lead me on my way
Oh lord live inside me…
Lead me home
We first heard Jamie N Commons’ soulful song, “Lead Me Home,” on the soundtrack to the hit AMC series The Walking Dead. It was featured in a very emotional episode where the main character, Rick, meets up with a man who saved him in the very first episode, Morgan, but unfortunately Morgan had since lost his son to the hordes of undead.
Morgan was the first living person that Rick met after he woke up to a post-apocalyptic world, and while surviving with his son Morgan had been a man brimming with hope and faith in a world that was steadily sinking into darkness. When Rick encountered him the second time, however, Morgan had lost this hopeful outlook and was spiraling towards insanity. Then, Commons’ song came on and as good as the episode was, we just kept replaying the wonderful two-minute long haunting track.
Commons plays a really slick guitar line that drives the song while singing with a soulful weathered voice that we couldn’t believe came from a 25-year-old. His voice, which takes on a raspy quality in his upper register, makes the song potent and it gives the impression of an old, tired man crying out for God’s intervention in the darkest hour.
“Lead Me Home” was perfect for the Walking Dead. A simple text for a world that had lost the intricacies of society and a simple prayer for a world that had lost its faith. It is a blues driven hymn which brings to mind one of the most beautiful and important prayers, the Jesus Prayer:
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
The song came out in 2013, but it has only become more relevant in recent years, as more and more people identify as religiously unaffiliated, or “nones”. A brief prayer asking the Lord to live inside us and guide us is perhaps just what we need to bring people back to their faith. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the song is so darned catchy.
