Best Faith-Based Spiritual Music of 2024 (or, CCM) - According to Cursory Research; What trends do we see?
Otherwise known as "CCM", what's the state of "faith-based music" going into 2025? I look at the "Best of" lists of 2024 to try and figure that out.
A few days ago I published a small article where I analyzed what I think are some of the trends happening in the music scene if we look at the “Best of 2024” lists that have been released, and noted that it seems to me that there is a shift towards “lo-fi” and indie sounds becoming mainstream.
I thought it would be interesting to do the same thing with faith-based music, otherwise marketed as CCM. Why? Well, my Substack is about how art, theology, philosophy and journalism intersect to create culture for the 21st century. So here we go.
What is faith-based music / CCM?
To be honest, you will find many different answers to this question.
The clearest answer is music being sung in churches to help aid congregational worship. But there is another branch, what has been marketed as CCM since the 70s (Christian Contemporary Music). This is pretty much music that speaks about faith in styles that are not entirely conducive to congregational singing—“Faith-based” Christian spiritual music that’s not Gospel (which is another whole genre). Some of it might be more overt, some more subtle. Lyrics can range from “Addicted to Jesus” (Careful with that link! Watching Carman is essentially like getting rickrolled for Christians) to “Song of the Harlot” (The Violet Burning got into a lot of trouble in the 90s for swearing in songs.) It’s a rather broad category with anything from cheese pop to death metal.
Technically (although not the reality these days), CCM is not actually “worship music”—music that Christians use for worshipping congregationally or devotionally—although most of the Christian labels and industry pretty much function in this space. Worship music is very specific, and popularity is due to a host of other reasons. For that reason, I’m going to ignore all of that as much as possible as I try and figure out what was popular this year with Christians outside of what they sing in church.
Because there are not many publishers in this space, most of my sources were independent bloggers or one-off articles at websites that cover other topics.1 I think this however does give me some indication of what people who listen to CCM are enjoying. My interest is to see if CCM follows the trend we see in the broader music sphere, or to try and figure out what Christians are listening to without resorting to Billboard or K-Love, who are mostly just marketing machines.
Here are my thoughts on trends I saw.
1. CCM can’t seem to shake country and folk
Most of CCM tends to come out of Nashville, and so the Nashville sound permeates most of the scene. Some record companies exist out of Nashville like the legendary Tooth & Nail from Seattle, which have always had a different vibe (originally an indie label) and have published a lot of bands that people who don’t listen to Christian music know and enjoy. But the fact remains: this is a scene mostly dominated by a Nashville sound, which is really a contemporary folk-country poppy vibe.
Going through “best of” lists of CCM I found online (I looked at a ton but didn’t keep count) I was struck immediately at how folk and country-lite pop most of it was. Not that I was surprised, only that it’s exceptionally obvious when you listen to the artists. I get it—these artists all influence each other, they’re involved with a scene, and for decades Nashville has dominated it. I appreciate that reality. However, listeners tend to gravitate toward the same sound, given what I found online. Whether this is because it’s what they’re accustomed to because of the dominance of the Nashville scene, or whether it’s because what Nashville makes is that popular and attractive is hard to say. I tend to veer towards the former, but that’s just my opinion as someone with different tastes.
Case in point: take a look at this video of 2024 album of the year nominees for the “We Love Christian Music Awards”. You’ll see soon enough what I mean about the predominant style.
A few outliers stood out, which I’ll get into now.
2. Album of the year - Forrest Frank
One of the albums that kept coming up on just about everyone’s list (so it was a trend) was Forrest Frank’s Child of God, an upbeat R&B pop/hip-hop offering that got to no. 1 on Billboard’s U.S. Christian Charts and apparently sold over 22,000 in its first week of release. Christianity Today covered it the release in more detail.
You can already see my problem with trying to define ‘worship music’ as a separate category above, because it doesn’t matter if a group releases a death metal grind industrial electronic pop album perhaps even with a few “E” tracks, it’s going to be labelled ‘worship’ somewhere by the industry because marketing.
Anyway, what’s interesting about all this is Forrest Frank is an independent artist who released the album via River House, which functions more as a service to artists than a traditional label. Forrest Frank isn’t new to the music industry as a whole, originally being the lead singer for the band Surfaces.
This points to some degree to the larger trend in the music industry toward independent releases doing very well. Stylistically though, there is nothing about Forrest Frank that reflects the trend toward lo-fi in the mainstream that I highlighted in my last post. Forrest Frank is clean, happy R&B.
Here is what fellow Substacker and Nashville musician
had to say about Forrest Frank in a discussion I had with Holt at one of his posts on the state of the Christian music scene:“He’s staying independent, focusing on authenticity, and creating music that’s solid both creatively and in taste. It’s not creatively groundbreaking when you compare it to non-Christian music, but it feels real, and I think it could hold up even if you put it in front of top non-Christian creatives.”
So Forrest Frank’s album seems to have gotten a lot of respect from many different quarters this year. Even if it doesn’t seem ‘groundbreaking’ it gets respect for what it’s trying to do.
3. Starflyer 59 got on a lot of lists
This was interesting as Starflyer 59 (with a new release called “Lust for Gold”) are / is quite a stalwart, releasing Shoegaze since 1993 and maturing and developing ever since. Starflyer 59 (essentially Jason Martin, now in his 50s) was actually one of the first groups to sign with Tooth & Nail records. Starflyer 59 has always been its own thing, thankfully never gone the “worship” route, and remains original. I found it quite encouraging to see that something different—even if it’s been “different” for a long time—was appreciated by a lot of people.
Starflyer 59 enjoys a discography of 17 albums (according to Wikipedia) and currently releases through a small indie label, Velvet Blue Music.
4. Another outlier: Braille
Braille’s “Push it Down” also made a bunch of lists, although it’s only about five songs as a kind-of primer for an upcoming album. But what it does is highlight something else I saw:
When it isn’t the Nashville country-lite pop folk sound, it’s either hip-hop or R&B.
The only exception to this was the aforementioned Starflyer 59. Otherwise, anything rock didn’t really make the majority of peoples’ lists. If it is rock, it’s a country-lite rock with pop elements. I’m not sure how “rock” that really is. Here I stand, unless it be proved otherwise.
It’s a whole other world
My biggest take way from this exercise is that CCM does not sound at all like what’s going on in the mainstream music side. Jesus Freak Hideout’s “Best of 2024” was the most interesting, as they at least diversified styles in their write-ups. I’m not surprised I guess. It’s been a while since I actually kept up to date with CCM but it really does seem like a very different world compared to what’s happening elsewhere.
Does this make it bad? Not by definition. There is a ton of well produced stuff. Singers with talent; top notch musicians. However, the sameyness of it all does make it less interesting, at least for me.
A review of Jesus Freak hideout’s indie music section reveals there are other choices outside of the Nashville and worship sphere, although these are obviously not as popular. I think I’ll explore this section more intently and unpack on it in the future.
I do want to give a “shout out” to some publications that don’t just cover what record labels are pushing. Those would be Indie Vision Music and Jesus Freak Hideout. These guys do it as a labor of love. Other publications I found tend to just post press releases, so I had to rely on a number of blogs.
John DiBiase’s Jesus Freak Hideout is a great site. I’ve known John for many years now and the site really is a labor of love for him and the people who write & review there. I’m happy to see that a writer like yourself recognizes John’s work.