Hits From The Heavens - Lauren Daigle And For King & Country Blaze Bold Trail

Charts at present show For King & Country's single "Joy" cracking the Top 40 charts, nearing 25 at Mainstream AC, and 35 at Hot AC. This is the third single from this band of two brothers, Joel & Luke Smallbone, one of the best live acts in any format, who while having traveled this path a couple times before having quickly had the greatest success with this current single still tracking forward with a trailblazing bullet.

I first ran into the catalyst of For King & Country's success three years ago upon the release of their first single from their previous album, Run Wild. Live Free. Love Strong, the powerful song "Fix My Eyes."

Programming Christian Contemporary at the time in Nashville, I wasn't yet familiar with the brothers, but upon the songs release, I witnessed personally and through sales and streaming their loyal and borderline, rabid, fanbase.

They didn't have the most fans among all the artists in the format, but what they had were very little fringe fans, so their growing fanbase would pack 18,000 people at live shows in Michigan, 11,000 in Buffalo and the story was consistent. And the artists whose fanbases were bulging at the seams were seeing declines of live audiences-sometimes under 3,000 in attendance.

Not an Empty Seat

In radio that's the difference between someone who samples your radio station getting included in the overall cume number or the person who puts time in, listens long and loves it; the raving fan.

As For King & Country's new album, Burn The Ships hits digital platforms this week, and the few actual shelves that still stock music, their sales will be seen higher than the names you're most familiar with; Maroon 5, Eminem, Drake, Ariana Grande, Machine Gun Kelly and others...and it's not a fluke, it's real, and a lot of those sales are going to people who are listening to you and not isolated to the niched Christian formats.

for King & Country took Lauren Daigle on the road with them in 2016

Have you looked the charts lately?

Who is this Lauren Daigle at number two on the album charts? And where did she come from?

When Lauren released her previous album, How Can It Be, she didn't have much of a thumbprint in the industry, minus an asterisk on an audition on American Idol, unlike those who can be overly driven towards success, Lauren barely had her own Facebook muscle working, let alone the push for artists to have strong Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, fan pages, etc...

But How Many Followers Do You Have

But release after release from Lauren proved that her music hit listeners between the eyes as the thumbprint that is forced on many of us in this industry, for her, happened organically, but explosively as her debut LP has sold more than two million copies.

Our industry has taken notice of Lauren Daigle's new album, Look Up Child, with the single "You Say," exploding past barriers that would want to keep it confined to a specific format. Have you checked sales in your market?

Lauren is presently selling Top 5 consistently market to market across the country, number two in Nashville where I live, and where she isn't that high, she's at least Top 15.

As brilliant programming consultant Guy Zapoleon guides our formats and industry through the music cycles, as we sit in the lull of the doldrums swinging our stations wildly right and recklessly left, hanging on while not knowing where to seek better quality music from, two singles have fallen from the skies, quality songs that can keep your audience engaged while you await the cycles to come back to consistency.