Some of the most well-liked music we hear in our Instagram and TikTok feeds comes from Forrest Frank, the independent artist and music producer known for his viral, feel-good songs.
His beat-driven pop combines vibey grooves and infectious hooks in hits like “Up!” and “Good Day.”
Frank was the top-ranked recent artist on last 12 months’s Billboard Christian charts, and his advice for fellow Christian musicians is that this: Make good music, and the audience will follow.
The 28-year-old has found an enormous audience by leveraging his production abilities, social media savvy, and collaborative approach to music-making. But he’s confident his songs climb the charts on Spotify and trend on social platforms because they’re good songs, not because he’s discovered find out how to hack the algorithms.
“If your content’s not doing well, the song’s not adequate,” the 28-year-old said on YTH Nation, a podcast by the youth ministry at Elevation Church.
The Waco, Texas-based musician and Baylor University grad is half of the favored duo Surfaces, and he has teamed up with an array of popular Christian artists including Elevation, Maverick City Music, Lecrae, and Hulvey.
A standard theme of Forrest Frank’s social media content is debunking the perception that Christian music is boring or corny, or that young people won’t take heed to music with faith-forward lyrics.
His success appears to be proving that there’s a large cohort of Gen-Z Christians searching for music that speaks openly and unapologetically about Jesus.
One of his viral reels shows Frank and Hulvey leading a passionate crowd of young adults in worship at a concert with the text Christian rap isn’t worship (sarcastically) overlaid, because the two artists and the audience sing the words of their song “Altar”: Glory to the Father / You deserve the praise / Lead me to your altar / Wash away my shame.
Frank is convinced that a rising cohort of Christian artists have the potential to capture audiences who aren’t even searching for Christian music.
“In the identical way that Christians have sacrificed their value systems to soak up worldly art, I feel what’s coming is the world’s going to sacrifice its value systems to soak up Christian art,” he said.
Frank seems to see himself appealing to listeners who’re concerned in regards to the content of secular music but haven’t found a Christian alternative adequate to drag them away. (That may appear to be a dig at previous generations of Christian artists, but it surely’s a generational rite of passage for younger listeners to perceive the music of their parents as passé.)
Christian art—music included—has shaped human culture for millenia, but Frank is the here and now. What is Gen Z (and older Gen Alpha) searching for? And how can Christian musicians offer something recent, relatable, and redemptive?
Frank has 4.1 million followers across social media platforms. In March, his song “Always” briefly became the No. 1 trending song on Instagram. Last month’s EP release, “God Is Good,” featuring Christian hip-hop artist Caleb Gordon, already has 2.1 million streams on Spotify, and a reel featuring the song and duo has 1.2 million views.
“A Christian song is the twelfth most viral song in America right away,” Frank said in a video posted on Instagram, before breaking into the chorus of “Good Day.”
Another post says, “A Christian song is the #1 most viral song in all Brazil,” cheering the recognition of “No Longer Bound,” a collab with Hulvey.
According to Chartmetric, 16.3 percent of Forrest Frank’s listenership is in Brazil; he occasionally translates and reposts content in Portuguese as a shout-out to his Brazilian fans.
“Content is an art form,” Frank told Elevation YTH. “I attempt to be kind to my viewers. It’s like running a restaurant. You’re gonna just be like, ‘Here’s your food.’ No, it’s like, ‘Here’s your perfect plate I made for you. I hope you find it irresistible.’”
Frank grew up within the church and surrounded by musicians—his mother was a worship leader and his grandmother wrote children’s music—but he didn’t aspire to turn into a Christian artist and even to pursue a profession as a performer.
He began experimenting with making music as a highschool student after seeing an artist on YouTube using a Maschine—a compact digital workstation used to generate melodic and percussive audio material using knobs and buttons—to make beats. He bought his own Maschine Mikro and was immediately hooked on the technique of DIY music-making. At Baylor, he put in hours of labor in isolation, developing his skills as a producer and composer.
Frank says that he began to fall away from his faith in college and points to a pivotal experience that reignited his faith: a spur-of-the-moment decision to point out up at a worship night at a church.
“I remember just falling on my knees and crying out to Jesus,” Frank recalled, as he told the story to Elevation YTH.
After graduating, Frank took an office job and continued to make and release music as a hobby, waiting to see if his creative work would find an audience. It did; and after a few 12 months of managing a job and an accelerating music profession, he left to pursue music full-time.
Frank’s success as a Christian artist is preceded by the success of Surfaces; their song “Sunday Best” peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the duo collaborated with Elton John on the song “Learn to Fly” for the long-lasting singer’s album The Lockdown Sessions, produced in 2020 in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2018, Frank released his first solo album, Warm, under the name Forrest. It’s only over the past 12 months and a half that Frank has broken out as a Christian artist as “Forrest Frank.”
Today’s listeners—across genres and niches—find a lot of their music online, but not all artists have succeeded in using digital platforms and harnessing social media algorithms. Artists like Frank appear to be finding success because they understand what their audience wants from the music and, perhaps as importantly, what they wish to do with it.
“Most artists I do know really struggle with social media. It appears like self-promotion,” said Wisdom Moon, founding father of Lula Music Group, a consulting and management agency for Christian artists.
“You have to take a look at it as serving your audience by giving them something hopeful, something they relate to.”
Songs go viral on TikTok and Instagram not because they’re catchy (that’s a part of it) but because they’re useful as sound clips to act as background music for content by other creators and followers.
“Artists have to consider their careers not only as musicians but additionally as content creators,” said Moon, who has also worked for Christian music labels like Centricity and Integrity.
And for Christian artists, faith plays an element within the content they contribute and contribute to. The most successful ones consider themselves as cocreators with their audiences.
Songs like “Good Day” and “Up!” are bouncy and lighthearted, the proper background track for a TikTok from a beach vacation or a reel showing an unmedicated labor with amazingly good vibes. They serve an audience that desires the music to feel prefer it could rating their lives, or the lives they wish to have.
This pragmatic, social media–conscious approach to music-making could appear at odds with the missional vision Christian artists like Frank articulate for his or her music. But Moon identified that popular Christian musicians have all the time needed to navigate this tension between utility and witness.
Christian songs have long served as an inspirational soundtrack for young Christians as they construct their identities. He recalled his days in youth ministry, making highlight videos from mission trips using Audio Adrenaline’s “Hands and Feet” as background music.
“Christian audiences are searching for songs that talk to their life and point to Jesus at the identical time,” said Moon. “Christian music has all the time needed to serve a dual purpose.”
People used so as to add their personal soundtracks to wedding slideshows and senior photo montages, but now every moment could be scored with background music on video platforms like TikTok and Instagram. It’s a part of how audiences, including young Christians, engage with music nowadays.
The musician / content creator model opens doors for independent artists like Frank to construct a profession without the interference of a label (although, Frank had the good thing about being a successful label-represented musician prior to embarking on a profession as an indie solo artist). It also prompts artists to permit their listeners access to their personal lives for the sake of constructing a community and following. Frank has embraced the model by posting photos of his wife, child, and residential, and infrequently incorporating them in his musical content.
As a solo artist, Frank has released a powerful amount of music in a short while. His 2023 album New Hymns contains a laid-back rendition of “Amazing Grace” and a guest appearance by rapper Lecrae on “Nothing however the Blood.” He also released a Christmas album last 12 months, A Merry Lofi Christmas, which showcases Frank’s laid-back vocals but against a cozier soundscape than his viral, danceable songs like “Up!” and features jazz saxophone solos and brass.
In February, he released a remix of “Praises” with Elevation Rhythm. In April, he released the EP God Is Good. This spring, several of his singles (“Up!,” “God Is Good,” “Always,” and “Good Day”) have gone viral on social media.
Frank is committed to serving his growing audience, but he says he’s open to whatever God has next, whether that’s continuing on this trajectory or doing something else (he jokes that if he didn’t make it as a musician, he would have probably turn into a massage therapist or a chiropractor).
“If God told me to delete my Spotify, I’d do it right away. If God told me to delete my Instagram, I’d do it right away.”
