Christian Music Star Enters a Bigger Galaxy
With a new album of love songs not tied to religious faith, Lauren Daigle, 31, is bracing for criticism.
“I’m terrified,” Lauren Daigle said with a broad smile. It 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, glowing with positivity.
Ms. Daigle, 31, has crossed over into the pop world with greater success than anyone since Amy Grant in the early 1990s. But this was the first time she had written love songs that are not about religious faith. She was worried that people would hear them as references to her personal life, rather than ruminations about universal experiences.
“I’m all about writing songs to help people through things they’re questioning,” she said.
“Lauren Daigle,” released on May 12, was her debut on a major label, after three albums on Centricity Music, an indie in Nashville, Tennessee. Later this year, Ms. Daigle will headline her first arena tour.
She has been criticized within the Christian community for some choices, 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 audience is unforgiving.
“I can’t imagine the stress artists are under now,” said Brandon Woolum, the managing editor of CCM Magazine. “They have to make sure they don’t say that wrong thing that gets them canceled.”
Any article his site runs about Ms. Daigle or Ms. Grant draws complaints from readers, Mr. Woolum added. “People are still mad at Amy.”
Some Christian artists, notably Ms. Grant and the stars Sandi Patty and Michael English, have been repudiated by fans for having affairs or getting divorced. Mr. English later denounced the Christian music industry as “a sick world.” Is Ms. Daigle worried that one mistake could damage her career in CCM? “Yes, one million-trillion percent,” she said. “For a long time, I lived my life confined, to make sure people think highly of me, and it made me miserable.”
Her new mission is to remain unrestrained. Ms. Daigle grew up amid the brackish wetlands of Lafayette, Louisiana, counting alligators on the drive over to visit her grandparents. For her new album, she wanted to redirect her music away from light, acoustic soft-rock toward a more soulful, Southern sound. She recorded the album, and another that will follow in late summer, with the producer Mike Elizondo, whose credits include Fiona Apple and Carrie Underwood, as well as Eminem and 50 Cent.
She wrote some songs with Shane McAnally, a Nashville hitmaker who is gay. And because the themes on her album are less faith-based than in the past, she knows some will count what is referred to in the CCM world as JPMs (mentions of Jesus Per Minute) and find the music too worldly.
In a radio interview after the DeGeneres fracas, Ms. Daigle summed up her view of Scripture. Anyone who expected her to shun gay people had “completely missed the heart of God,” she said. “Be who Christ was to everyone as well.”
This brought a Christian Post column that scoffed, “Lauren, dear sister in Christ, you failed this test.”
As for the criticisms Ms. Daigle has faced, Ms. Grant, a friend, said, “My response is, God is good, people are a mess — all of us.”
Ms. Daigle’s first single, “How Can It Be,” hit Number 5 on Billboard’s Christian singles chart, the first of 14 songs in the Top 10, including five Number 1s, a record for a female singer. “You Say,” from 2018, spent 129 weeks as the most popular Christian song, and hit Number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100. It has a brooding quality and showcases her flexible alto, which often draws comparisons to Adele.
In 2021, Ms. Daigle contracted the coronavirus and had migraines for months. Her post-Covid symptoms included panic attacks, anxiety and paranoia. “Dealing with post-Covid symptoms paired with the animosity that plagued our nation brought me to one of the lowest points of my life,” she said. “I had to do a deep dive on who I was.”
Eventually, Ms. Daigle began to feel divine love present in the care showed by people close to her, and she wrote “Thank God I Do,” a bruised ballad that is one of the highlights of her new album.