Joy To The World

Matthew West is the seventh artist on this backlog to record Isaac Watts's 1719 text within the same review cycle, keeping the original verses intact while layering a repeated "Joy" vocal chant underneath them like a congregational response threaded through each line. "He rules the world with truth and grace" carries the same claim Watts drew from Psalm 98:9, that God "will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity" — kingship framed as good news rather than threat.

"Repeat the sounding joy" across "fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains" echoes Isaiah 55:12's picture of creation itself responding to God: "the mountains and the hills will break out before you into singing; and all the trees of the field will clap their hands." Watts wasn't writing a Christmas carol originally — the text is a paraphrase of Psalm 98 read as a hymn about Christ's reign rather than only his birth — and West's arrangement keeps that focus by leaning on the repeated refrain rather than dwelling on manger imagery the way other Christmas arrangements do.