“I’m terrified,” Lauren Daigle said with a wide smile instead of obvious terror. That was before the release of her new self-titled album, and the biggest singer in contemporary Christian music was at Atlantic Records in New York, radiating positivity.
Daigle, 31, has crossed over into the world of pop more successfully than anyone since Amy Grant in the early ’90s. But this was the first time he had composed love songs that were not about religious faith. She worried that people would hear them as references to her personal life, rather than meditations on universal experiences.
“Lauren Daigle,” released May 12, was her major-label debut, following three albums on Centricity Music, an independent label in Nashville, Tennessee. At the end of the year, she will also headline her first arena tour.
Daigle has been criticized within the Christian community for some of her decisions, especially for appearing on ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’, hosted by a lesbian celebrity, in 2018. Contemporary Christian music, or CCM, artists live under a microscope, and much of the public is unforgiving.
Some Christian artists, notably Grant and stars Sandi Patty and Michael English, have been disowned by fans for having affairs or getting divorced. English later called the Christian music industry “a sick world.”
Is Daigle worried that a mistake could hurt her CCM career?
“Yeah, a million trillion percent“, answered. “For a long time, I lived my life in confinement, to make sure people had a good opinion of me, and I was miserable.”. His new mission is to free himself from ties.
Daigle was raised among the saltwater marshes of Lafayette, Louisiana, counting alligators on her way to visit her grandparents. For his new album, he wanted to redirect his music away from light, acoustic soft rock towards a deeper southern sound.
He recorded the album, and another to follow later in the summer, with producer Mike Elizondo, whose credits include Fiona Apple and Carrie Underwood, as well as Eminem and 50 Cent.
He wrote some songs with Shane McAnally, a Nashville hitmaker who is gay. And since the tracks on his album are less faith-based than before, he knows some will count what in the CCM world are known as JPMs (Jesus Per Minute Mentions) and find the music too mundane.
In a radio interview after the DeGeneres scandal, Daigle summarized his views on scripture. Anyone who expected her to avoid gay people had “completely lost the heart of God,” she claimed. “I also know how Christ was for everyone”.
This generated further opprobrium, including a column in the Christian Post that mocked, “Lauren, dear sister in Christ, you failed this test.”.
As for the criticism Daigle has faced, Grant, a friend of hers, stated, “My answer is, God is good, people are chaos — we all are.”
Daigle’s first single, “How Can It Be,” peaked at No. 5 on Billboard’s Christian Singles Chart, the first of 14 Top 10 songs, including five No. 1s, a record for a female singer. .
2018’s “You Say” spent 129 weeks as the most popular Christian song, peaking at number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. She has a melancholic quality and is highlighted by her supple alto voice, which often draws comparisons to Adele.
‘You Say’ was still dominating the Christian popularity charts when the pandemic began. In 2021, Daigle contracted the coronavirus and suffered from migraines for months. Her post-Covid symptoms included panic attacks, anxiety, and paranoia.
“Dealing with post-covid symptoms combined with the animosity that plagued our nation led to one of the worst moments of my life.“, he pointed. “I had to really get into who I was.”
Over time, Daigle began to feel the divine love present in the affection shown by those close to her, and composed ‘Thank God I Do’, an emotional ballad that is one of the highlights of her new album.
Criticism and rejection reinforced his determination to follow a personal understanding of scripture, rather than that of a church or a minister, a practice dating back to the founding of Protestantism.
“Not that criticism and animosity don’t hurt, but I really do have that self-confidence that will always get me back on my feet.”.
ROB TANNENBAUM
THE NEW YORK TIMES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6727156, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-05-23 19:00:07
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