Soul-Audio » Features » Paige Armstrong

Paige Armstrong

Paige Armstrong is not your average teenage girl. At 19, she has already overcome a battle with cancer, been a keynote speaker for a national youth-oriented conference and had music featured on those holiday samplers you sometimes hear in places like Bath & Body Works. And now she has released her block-rocking debut album, Wake Up (read our review here).

Paige recently took some time to talk with Soul-Audio about her passion for inspiring her generation to stop being apathetic, how God used cancer to blow up and completely reformat her life, and just how awesome a gift music is for her.

Soul-Audio: So tell us a bit about your new album, Paige.

Paige Armstrong: All right. Well my album is called Wake Up, it released in October and I am really excited about it. The message of the whole album is just straight from my heart with everything I’ve learned from cancer and just all the crazy things God has done in my life. Each song is based on a topic that God’s been showing me about over the past few years, and musically it’s just an expression of…I love so many different kinds of rock music and I’ve grown up listening to rock ‘n roll bands, and so I’ve always wanted to do rock and couple an exciting, passionate message with hardcore music. (Laughs.) So I’m so pleased with how everything turned out and just excited about the project.

SA: Nice. So the album’s in-your-face, kick-to-the-seat-of-your-pants style is intentional then.

Paige: Absolutely. I’ve been passionate about anti-apathy in my generation and I think, really, the only thing that gets young people’s attention is something bold and in-your-face. But it has to be in a different way of course because (young people) get all kinds of things through media and secular music and TV shows and just all kinds of stuff that is just as bold and in-your-face as you can be. But, it’s usually awful stuff! (Laughs.) Or it’s extreme and edgy and as awful as you can get and everybody is just competing for the extremes.

So for a message that is so opposite from all of that, I wanted it to be as in-your-face as it can be, but in a loving way and in a way that’s gonna tell them, “Hey, this is real, this is important, this is what counts.”

And I feel, when I go out and speak to young people, I can be bold and be somewhat in-your-face with the message of, “Hey, our generation is living in apathy. We need to wake up and use our lives.” And I can say those things because I’m one of them, you know? I never wanted it to be something where I’m pointing the finger and condemning someone. No, it’s not about that. It’s about each one of us waking up from the rut that we get in sometimes, and using the life we’ve been given.

SA: And that’s a refreshing aspect of the album, that and the fact that the message of anti-apathy—though geared towards today’s teens—is entirely applicable to people of all ages.

Paige: Absolutely. And I’m really glad you said that because I hoped that was something that would come across, because you’re right it’s definitely not just a message for young people. I think I see it a lot in young people and it is a really huge, massive problem in young people, but these things never start with a young person, they start with someone’s parents or the older people in their lives passing things down to them, so it’s a message for every one of us.

SA: Absolutely. And I think that’s why it’s important for people to hear this album and hear this message because whether you’re 10 or 60, whether you like rock music or not, it’s never too early and never too late to hear about the importance of not being apathetic. You hear about how when people hit 25, 30 years old they’re so cemented in their ways that it’s hard to incite them to change, but even if that’s true people should still be out there challenging them to change when a change is needed.

Paige: And one of the songs—“Come Alive”— kind of relates to people who have gotten into a routine, who may be a little older, who took a job out of college because it was safe and they just kind of got comfortable in it and stayed there, and any dreams that they had when they were younger they just pushed aside. So the song “Come Alive” talks about how, God doesn’t call us to the practical, he calls us to the radical. Don’t get stuck in your everyday grind, in your everyday routine, even though it may be comfortable, even though you may have a family and kids now that you feel like you would be reckless if you quit your job and pursued your passion.

I think there’s a proper balance of once you have certain responsibilities you have to look at things a little differently, but at the same time, every single one of us needs to come alive to our passion and what God has put inside of us, and that song is meant to speak out to those who have gotten stuck in the spot of being comfortable and have gotten a little farther in life, but it’s just getting harder and harder to break out of that.

SA: And I was that person once some years back. I was comfortable in a situation even though everything inside of me was screaming for me to get out of there. I knew I could keep doing my job and make a lot of money doing it—

Paige: But is that what it’s all about?

SA: Exactly. It’s not. You say it in “Episode” where one of the guys used to be happy back when life was simpler and he had a few less zeroes.

Paige: Ah-ha! (Laughs.)

SA: I’ve never had a whole bunch of zeroes—

Paige: Neither have I! (Laughs.)

SA: But I recognize the sentiment by that lyric. I mean I can’t even fathom having billions of dollars, let alone having a clue what I would actually do with it all.

Paige: You’re absolutely right. That’s a huge responsibility having that much money, but even having the money that we do have is a responsibility because it’s so much more than the rest of the world. Here sometimes we say, “Oh I’m broke,” and me…I’m young so I don’t really have much (Laughs.) but at the same time, in comparison, it’s just like good grief, we live in excess. I think this is something that should just always be on our hearts and minds, that realization.

SA: I remember the first time I went on a mission trip to Mexico, and seeing these kids in rags with a soccer ball and having the biggest smiles I have ever seen…I’ve never forgotten that image because I’ve never seen people so happy with so little. That experience just broke me, big time.

Paige: I went on a mission trip to an Indian reservation in Arizona, and just going out there was a culture shock for me because it’s a reservation, it’s a separated way of life and it’s totally different from us.

SA: You mentioned earlier about how you had cancer when you were younger, so for the uninitiated, tell us about the genesis of “The Story Song” and how it all connected to cancer and how that changed your life at such a young age.

Paige: It changed my whole perspective on what’s important. It changed my view of life in general. I would say “The Story Song” is just…I wanted to write a song about my story, about the dark times, about what I’ve learned, and then flip it around and say, “Hey, this is my story, but what’s yours?” Everybody has a story whether it’s cancer or whatever; everybody has a story and it’s significant. So that’s what “The Story Song” was birthed out of, and it’s kind of funny that it ended up being called “The Story Song,” because we kept referring to it as that when we were writing it, and then after it was written we kind of kept calling it “The Story Song.” (Both laugh.)

So that’s how it ended up going on the record and I hope that when people hear it they get that message out of it. Like, okay, this is what she went through and what she learned, but what’s my story and how am I living it out?

You know, the things that happen in our lives do shape us, but I think we have a choice as to how we’re going to handle the situations that come upon us, and how that story goes is somewhat dependent on how we handle them, what we do with those circumstances. Romans 8:28 has become my life verse because it talks about how God works out all things for the good of those who love him who are called according to his purpose. That verse and that promise is such an essential part of my story and I think it’s an essential part in everybody’s story because we all face these hard times, but God promises to work through them and to chart something new from all our hard times. So I would say that’s the main message of “The Story Song” and my story and all I’ve learned.