"There Is a God" is the title of a song written by Chris DuBois and Ashley Gorley

Ashley Gorley

Ashley Gorley is an American songwriter and producer. Gorley graduated from Belmont University in 1999, and in 2001 signed with Combustion Music...

, and recorded by American country

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

 artist Lee Ann Womack

Lee Ann Womack

Lee Ann Womack is an American country music singer and songwriter, who is best known for her old fashioned-styled country music songs that often discuss subjects such as cheating and lost love....

. It was released in November 2009 as the lead-off single to her upcoming seventh studio album.

Content

"There Is a God" is a ballad, backed primarily by acoustic guitar, with steel guitar fills and strings. The song's narrator describes everything she sees, from things of supposed beauty ("Watch a flock of birds against the morning sun / Close your eyes and listen to the river run") to life's supposed miracles ("Hearing the doctor say he can't explain it, but the cancer's gone"), as being proof that "there is a god."

The song was previously recorded by Trent Willmon

Trent Willmon

Trent Willmon is an American country music artist. Active since 1998 as a songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, Willmon was signed to Columbia Records in 2004. He released two albums for the label and charted six singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs charts before exiting Columbia in 2006...

 for his 2007 album Broken In

Broken In

Broken In is the third album by American country music singer Trent Willmon. It was released in February 2008 on the independent Compadre Records label. None of its singles — the title track, "There Is a God" or "Cold Beer and a Fishing Pole" — entered the Hot Country Songs charts...

. His version was released as a single in late 2007, although it failed to chart. Womack recorded her own version of the song and a positive response from country radio led to its single release.

Reception

The song was met with mixed reception among music critics. Matt Bjorke of Roughstock reviewed the song favorably, and described it as a return to a more "contemporary" country sound: "This song may not please the traditionalists who enjoyed the last couple of albums from Lee Ann Womack but it’s also not as ‘pop’ as “[I Hope You] Dance” was but it might just reach as many people with the strong lyric and Lee Ann’s expert delivery of them." Kevin John Coyne of Country Universe gave the song a B-, stating that the lyrics "rubbed [him] the wrong way" and that Womack's performance was "tepid" and lacking in conviction. Jim Malec of The 9513 gave the song a thumbs down, describing it as a "syrupy delivery more than a few personalities removed from the sultry and smoky vocals on Call Me Crazy, with her rendering of this song’s idyllic world layered in pastel rather than neon." He also described the song's lyrics as a "basket of clichés." Country Weekly

Country Weekly

Country Weekly is an American tabloid style weekly magazine established in 1994. The magazine focuses on country music stars and events, and regularly features exclusive interviews with recording artists and country music news...

reviewer Chris Neal said that the song was "lovely but bland" and criticized the "potshots at science" in the bridge ("Science says it's all just circumstance / Like the whole world's just an accident"), giving it three stars out of five.

Chart performance

"There Is a God" debuted at #60 on the U.S. Billboard

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

Hot Country Songs

Hot Country Songs

Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States.This 60-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly mostly by airplay and occasionally commercial sales...

chart for the week of November 14, 2009. It became her twenty-first Top 40 single on that chart, reaching a peak of #32 in March 2010.
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Chart (2009-2010)	Peak position