Church

“Church,” released July 25, 2025, as part of Tasha Cobbs Leonard’s debut studio album TASHA, pairs a gospel veteran with a mainstream R&B star in a setting that deliberately doesn’t sand down either artist’s identity to fit the other. Produced by Paul C. Rivera and Don Barro, the arrangement stays down to piano, choir, and Cobbs Leonard and Legend’s two lead vocals – no attempt to build a crossover-radio production around Legend’s presence, and no attempt to make the record sound like a typical Cobbs Leonard solo cut either. It’s a genuine duet, not a gospel artist’s track with a featured guest.

The song’s actual argument is in its central line: “teach me how to have church on a Monday,” a request for the emotional and spiritual experience of a Sunday service to survive contact with an ordinary weekday. That’s a sharper, more specific idea than most worship songs attempt, and the minimal arrangement gives it room to land without competing for attention – there’s nothing in the mix distracting from two voices making a genuinely vulnerable request. Legend’s smoother, more restrained delivery against Cobbs Leonard’s full gospel power creates real contrast rather than a mismatch, each voice doing something the other one doesn’t.

8.6/10 – a Grammy-nominated pairing that earns the nomination by choosing restraint over spectacle, at exactly the moment restraint serves the song’s actual idea.

Hero image: Photo: robbiesaurus / Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.