Todd Galberth is not content with the 75 million streams his self-penned anthems such as “Lord, You Are Good,” “For My Good” and “I’m Getting Ready” (as recorded by Tasha Cobbs Leonard & Nicki Minaj) have earned him over the last four years. The rising star and praise and worship leader is destined to add several more millions of streams to his career tally with an exciting new track, “Better Than Good” (Stella’s Boy Music), which debuts at No. 1 on Billboard’s Gospel Digital Songs Sales chart for the week ending October 17, 2020. The track is available on all digital service platforms.
Galberth laughs that his friends have said the new song should complete his trilogy of “good” songs. “They said I can’t use the word good anymore,” he jokes. “I was working on the next album and wanted a good upbeat corporate song. I went to Todd Dulaney’s live recording in Chicago and he had a lot of great songs and I was inspired. I started looking back at my life and I started humming this melody and it all came at once. Good came up again. I can’t get away from it. The Lord is so good. I do not deserve this wife I have. I don’t deserve these children, this success, this life that I live. If it weren’t for the goodness of God, it would have all fallen apart. I can give you 14 accounts where I should have been dead, but God pulled me through and kept it together, so I started singing that He is better than good and that was the song.”
In spite of some twists and turns, Galberth’s journey has been a good one. A native of Raeford, NC, his father, James, was a carpenter, and his mother, Stella, a technician. He has a brother and two sisters. “I grew up in church,” he adds. He was saved at the Mt. Sinai Holiness Church at the age of 16 – that’s also when he started leading worship. “It wasn’t because I was thought of as this great singer,” he says sans pretense. “Somebody didn’t show up and there was a spot to fill.”
After graduating from the North Carolina School of Telecommunications, Galberth became a background vocalist and eventually, an actor, in touring plays such as “A Woman’s Gotta Do What a Woman’s Gotta Do!” and “If Loving You is Wrong.” Along the way, he shared stages with theater veterans Carl Payne, Freddie Jackson, and Ann Nesby. After promoters started missing his paychecks, he decided to get a 9 to 5.
On the weekends, he led worship at World Overcomers Church in Raleigh and during the week, he worked in the public school system. “My wife had just had our baby, we had bought a house and I lost my job,” he recalls.” I was like, what’s going on? I’ve never been fired from a job. I was between a rock and a hard place. I didn’t tell my wife. She thought I was going to work. I was hanging at a friend’s house playing play station. I was depressed. I asked God, what I was supposed to do? He said, `Am I still good? I thought about it and said, `Yes, Lord, you’re good’ and that’s when that song came to me.”
Galberth taught “Lord, You Are Good” to the church worship team and they began to sing it on a regular basis. A YouTube video of one of the team performances introduced the song to other churches around the globe and it developed a life of its own. Gospel star, James Fortune, caught wind of his talent and began to work with him too. “Someone from my church knew him and connected me,” Galberth explains. Fortune recorded his tunes “The Curse is Broken,” featured me on another track entitled, “Forever,” and had him perform in his backing group.
By 2016, Galberth formally released “Lord, You Are Good” and watched it skyrocket to No. 1 on Billboard’s Gospel Digital Song Sales chart. “It grew legs on YouTube… churches were singing it for two years before I released it to radio.” That was also the year that he was asked to fill-in for a vacationing worship leader at Redemption (now Relentless Church) Church in Greenville, SC. “I went to fill-in and they wouldn’t let me leave,” he laughs.
Another miracle came through the church. “We were in spontaneous worship one day and this song about `getting ready’ came to me. I led the worship team in doing several choruses of it. When I got home, I wrote it. I remember saying to my wife, Vanessa, I think Tasha [Cobbs Leonard] would kill this. I didn’t know if she was recording anything new or anything. Two weeks later, she called me and said she wanted me to be a part of her new recording and I told her about the song. She said, to send it to her. I did and she said, `Let’s do it.’ Then, for Nicki Minaj to get on it later was something I never imagined.” It zoomed to the top of multiple Billboard charts and earned a BMI Gospel Song of the Year Award for 2019.
Since then, Galberth has been on a roll. “Have Your Way,” a collaboration with Jabari Johnson, reached No. 4 on Billboard’s Gospel Digital Song Sales chart in 2017. He followed up with “For My Good” which soared to No. 5 on the same chart in 2019. “Everything came through serving,” Galberth says. “I never sought any of this out. I’m not that type of person. I’ve seen people who know how to maximize an opportunity but I’m still learning all of that, but I never wanted to be anyone who cheated and schemed to get to a certain place. I just kept coming into contact with people who believed in me and would pass my name on. I believe that if something is my opportunity, then it’s my opportunity and no one can take it away.”
