From the Wall Street Journal [paywall]:
A few days after the star singer Forrest Frank fell off his skateboard, crashed into a wall and fractured two vertebrae, he previewed a new track about the accident on TikTok. Frank, formerly a member of the pop duo Surfaces, has exploded in the past year by making Christian music that pairs hip-hop inflected beats with relentlessly sunny lyrics. Though he was in “excruciating” pain, his tune aimed for uplift. “God’s got my back,” he sang, still bedridden. “Even when I fall or get attacked.” The TikTok clip has earned nearly 4 million views.
As Christian artists embrace a wider variety of sounds and market songs savvily on social media, they are rapidly widening their reach. Faith-based music can go viral just like rap or pop songs, and it gains an additional boost from its close relationship with country, which currently dominates the charts.