Success of Christian Music in the Modern Secular Industry

Christian music has often been separated into its own section in the industry. iTunes sets it apart as its own area, Spotify segregates the style, radio stations are made specifically for Christian music, and even people set it aside as a different zone of music for worship rather than entertainment. While this has been a common theme in the industry for so long, in recent years, things have been changing.

Watch any award show now and you will notice a common theme. Almost every artists thanks God for their success. This hasn’t always been the case in the past and has grown in popularity. People look at faith as a good trait to have. Billy Corgan (lead singer of Smashing Pumpkins) had it right when he said music was heading towards talking about faith. He said sex, drugs, and alcohol has been talked about so much, the new thing to talk about would be faith. While much of this in the secular industry is misplaced incentive to promote themselves, faith is without a doubt an increasing topic in music. We, as Christians, should embrace this change and use it to spread light in the correct way.

With all this being said, it is important to note that this rise in the style’s popularity has brought many Christian artists to the front line of the music scene in general. With positive lyrics and authentic meaning about real-life topics, it’s easy to see why Christian music can do so well in the industry today. So, let’s talk about a few of the artists that have taken advantage of this wave and have put their ripple into the pool.

Let’s start from the beginning. Some of the pioneering breakthroughs into the secular market have been artists like Switchfoot and Skillet. In the last ten years both artists have had songs featured in NFL commercials (Hero, by Skillet, was featured in two promotional videos for NFL games in 2009. The same song was in two WWE video games as well). This was huge for artists whose music had been separated for so long. This feature gave them a solid comparison to secular songs and showed that Christian artists can create music just as good, if not better in many cases.

In just the past couple years, an explosion of Christian artists have penetrated the secular industry, and not just the most popular ones in the Christian Music Industry. NF, KJ-52 and Toby Mac have all had their songs used as walk up music for national sports such as Baseball or UFC, and have had their music incorporated in video games associated with those sports as well. The Newsboys (currently working on new music… listen to their new single here) have had their music features in NFL video games and have performed concerts at half-time of games as well. Lecrae performed at an NBA game (Atlanta Hawks) this last year. He also has received a Grammy for his music (there needs to be a whole article written on the segregation of music by religion for the Grammy award show, but we will save that for a later time). All of this success has brought a lot of recognition to the Christian industry and has brought many opportunities to these artists.

Andy Mineo just released his sophomore album “Uncomfortable,” and was able to feature Jon Bellion on the song “Rat Race.” On Lecrae’s Church Clothes Mixtapes, he has incorporated B.o.B. Utilizing these secular artists, they have been able to appeal to a crowd not formerly accessible to their genre.

Then, we have Twenty One Pilots, a band born in the secular industry (and if you’ve read my articles, you know I’m a huge fan of theirs). Just this last month, with the recent release of their album “Blurryface,” performed live on the VMA’s with A$AP Rocky (see here). Their music has skyrocketed to hit #1 on the billboards and has given them the broad range flexibility to show the Christian light to an audience not typically being exposed to it.

As fans of these artists, should we be embracing this or resisting their “sell out” tendencies? The answer is easy. Jesus told us to preach to all nations. He didn’t tell us to form our own culture and community and to keep to ourselves. We were called to spread the gospel, and that is what these artists are doing. As long as they continue to preach through their lyrics/actions as artists and don’t change their primary focus to fame/fortune, I will continue to support them. To close out, here is the music video for TOP’s song, “Lane Boy” that addresses just that.