What do you do when you’re Hillsong United, one of the most influential contemporary Christian bands in the country, and you’re planning the release of your next album? You follow Beyoncé.
“She’s a model [for us],” frontman Joel Huston joked with Guideposts.org about why, like the R&B diva is wont to do, the band kept their sixth studio album, Wonder, a surprise until less than a month before its release date. Forgoing the normal promotion schedule for an album is a bit risk for a Christian band—even a multi-platinum-selling one whose last album, Empires, peaked at #5 on the Billboard 200 charts—but they’re not worried.
“I honestly believe that good art will make a way for itself,” Huston says. “Sometimes we can oversell something and it takes away the beauty of what you’re trying to say and what you want it to be.”
For Hillsong United, the simple beauty of the world—despite the political and social uneasiness people are feeling—is what they’re hoping to help people find.
“You look around at what the atmosphere of the world is currently and it’s like, ‘Well, what can we bring?’” band member Matt Crocker says. Their answer is 12 tracks of healing music that can inspire listeners to marvel in the majesty of God and to find joy and hope through faith.
The chorus of the title track—I see the world in light/ I see the world in wonder/ I see the world in life/ Bursting in living color—is a celebration of everything good that God has given us.
“As Christians we’re called to bring that joy and that happiness that we know as Christ living in us and so [we said], ‘Let’s be a mirror reflection of that with this album.’ We put everything we had into bringing that sound.”
In “Future Marches In,” the band takes that message of hope a bit further, urging listeners to fight against fear and defeat by turning to faith with lyrics like: Don’t hide in silence while the truth screams out/ Don’t fear the future shaking up this ground/ There’s a freedom that marches in a different sound.
Still, Huston says the main goal of the record and the group isn’t to force people to faith but to model the beauty of living as a believer through their music.
“If the music is good, we shouldn’t have to be slamming it down people’s throats, Huston says.
“I think it’s the same with the gospel. I don’t think we have to be Bible-bashing people in order for them to get it. I think the best way to get people to understand the gospel is to love them and to just live in a way that is reflective of the beauty of God.”
For more from the band, check out our interview with them below:
