“We wanna thank God for giving us the grace to give him a little glory in this building tonight,” rapper-slash-country hit-generator Jelly Roll said onstage in May at the 60th Academy of Country Music Awards. The speech came during an exultant performance of his collab with Shaboozey, “Amen,” which features the chorus, “Somebody say a prayer for me / ‘Cause the pills ran out and I still can’t sleep.” The song details a religious devotion earned through a struggle with darker forces. “Even a crooked road can still get you home,” Jelly Roll concluded.
Jelly Roll might seem like a surprising mouthpiece for this kind of preachy moment, but the song is a hit even outside the country bubble. In a recent article for Christianity Today, musicologist Kelsey McGinnis identified the work of artists like Jelly Roll, Brandon Lake, and Thomas Rhett as “barstool conversion rock,” a notably masculine form of music that sits adjacent to contemporary Christian music (CCM).
But that subgenre is far from the only religiously tinged music — created by everyone from devout evangelicals to open agnostics, from country artists to rappers — climbing the charts today; a number of pop songs are likewise courting the divine. Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” which arguably functions as a direct-appeal to God, was a ubiquitous bop for most of 2024. Alex Warren’s “Ordinary,” a love song that easily doubles as a Christian worship song, has slowly climbed the charts over the past few months to become one of 2025’s biggest breakout hits (it’s currently No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100).
By establishing an industry-leading sound and a distinct identity, in a time of increased polarization around religion, Christian-coded music has finally broken containment and conquered the airwaves.
