![\"Benson](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/22c8319e-c87c-43cc-8afb-65753559c089.jpg\")
<\/p>\nGod is trending. A new generation of male pop stars are on their knees \u2013 literally \u2013 begging for redemption. How did we get here, asks Hannah Ewens\n<\/p>\n
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Benson Boone performs during the first weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (Amy Harris\/2025 Invision\/AP)<\/p>\n
When I saw moustachioed pop sensation Benson Boone play a show in London last year, the pop star performed the best of his pedestrian midtempos last: his religiously ecstatic hit, \u201cBeautiful Things\u201d. It was inevitable that his UK No 1 track would be saved to leave the audience with a lingering sense of catharsis. In the song, Boone depicts himself as a simple man on his knees, praying to the divine. As the music builds to a holy drop, he belts out: \u201cI want you, I need you, oh God \/ Don\u2019t take \/ These beautiful things that I\u2019ve got.\u201d Cue a dramatic backflip, a Boone trademark at this point. (But really, how else can a man demonstrate religious fervour if not by launching himself into the air from a dangerous height?). The mostly reserved congregation went wild.<\/p>\n
Faith-pop, sung by faux-ordinary guys desperately appealing to God, is the dominant sound in Top 40 music right now. TikTok star Alex Warren has just scored the longest-running UK No 1 this decade with \u201cOrdinary\u201d, a cinematic, \u201ctake-me-to-church\u201d number full of heavy-handed Christian metaphors. \u201cYou got me kissin\u2019 the ground of your sanctuary \/ Shatter me with your touch, oh Lord, return me to dust,\u201d he croons on the chorus. The almost-as-ubiquitous gospel-tinged radio hit \u201cLose Control\u201d by Teddy Swims was one of the biggest tracks of 2024 and remains one of this year\u2019s most-streamed and bought. The addiction anthem may not explicitly mention God stuff (bar the aside that \u201cthe devil\u2019s knocking at my door\u201d), but \u2013 through its themes of surrender and brokenness \u2013 reads clearly as Christian-coded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"God is trending. A new generation of male pop stars are on their knees \u2013 literally \u2013 begging…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[50591,77,6538,1805,269,449,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-349343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-charli-xcx","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-justin-bieber","11":"tag-kanye-west","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-tiktok","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115038907697015869","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}