The Jesus Movement and the First Records
Contemporary Christian music began in the late 1960s when young converts from the counterculture started writing rock songs about Jesus. The epicenter was Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, where pastor Chuck Smith welcomed barefoot hippies into a church that most congregations would have turned away. In 1971, Smith’s church created Maranatha! Music as a nonprofit label. The first release, The Everlastin’ Living Jesus Music Concert, was a sampler of bands like Love Song and Children of the Day, raw folk-rock with electric guitars and personal lyrics that sounded nothing like Sunday morning hymns.
Larry Norman, a singer-songwriter from San Jose who had recorded with Capitol Records as part of the band People!, released Only Visiting This Planet in 1972, mixing Beatles-influenced pop with protest lyrics about Vietnam, consumerism, and the apocalypse. His song “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?” became the movement’s thesis statement. The church establishment largely disagreed. Norman spent the rest of his career fighting with labels, pastors, and the industry he helped create, dying in 2008 estranged from the CCM world.
Building an Industry from Scratch
The business infrastructure came from Waco, Texas. In 1951, a 23-year-old sportscaster named Jarrell McCracken founded Word Records based on a spoken-word recording called The Game of Life, a fictional radio broadcast of a football match between good and evil. Word grew into the largest Christian music company in the country, spawning subsidiary labels: Canaan Records in the 1960s for southern gospel, Myrrh Records in 1972 for the new contemporary sound. In 1977, Myrrh signed a teenager named Amy Grant, who would become CCM’s first superstar.
On the West Coast, Billy Ray Hearn left Myrrh in 1976 to found Sparrow Records. Sparrow signed Keith Green, whose 1978 album No Compromise combined piano-driven rock with an intensity that alienated as many listeners as it won. Green gave away records for free, insisting that charging for the gospel was wrong. On July 28, 1982, he died in a plane crash near Lindale, Texas, along with two of his children and nine others, when the pilot overloaded a Cessna 414. He was 28.
The Gospel Music Association, founded in 1964, created the Dove Awards in 1969 (the concept originated with songwriter Bill Gaither at a board meeting the previous year). The third ceremony in 1971 was invalidated due to ballot stuffing by the Blackwood Brothers, and that year is still not recognized by the GMA.
The Crossover Wars
By the mid-1980s, Nashville had become CCM’s center of gravity, and the question that defined the next decade was whether Christian artists could, or should, reach secular audiences. Amy Grant answered with Heart in Motion, released in March 1991 through both Word (for Christian retailers) and A&M Records (for mainstream stores). “Baby Baby” reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The album sold five million copies. Grant faced fierce criticism from Christian audiences who felt she had diluted her message, but the tension between faith and commerce never fully resolved; it simply became the genre’s permanent condition.
Michael W. Smith, Grant’s frequent collaborator, navigated the same territory. Born in Kenova, West Virginia, he moved to Nashville and nearly destroyed his career with substance abuse before recommitting to his faith in 1979. His 1991 single “Place in This World” reached number six on the Hot 100, and he later founded Rocketown, a teen center in Nashville, in 1994.
DC Talk, a trio formed at Liberty University in 1987, fused rap, rock, and pop into the biggest CCM act of the 1990s. Their 1995 album Jesus Freak debuted at number 16 on the Billboard 200, the highest debut for a Christian album at that time. The title track merged grunge guitars with rap verses. The album went double Platinum and won the 1997 Grammy for Best Rock Gospel Album. When DC Talk went on hiatus in 2000, member TobyMac launched a solo career leaning into hip-hop, topping the Billboard 200 in 2012 with Eye on It.
The Worship Explosion
The late 1990s brought a shift from artist-driven pop toward congregational worship music, and the catalyst came from Sydney. In 1993, Darlene Zschech, a worship leader at Hillsong Church (founded in 1983), wrote “Shout to the Lord” during a period of financial stress. She was so uncertain about it that she asked pastor Geoff Bullock to face away from her while she played it. Within a few years, an estimated 25 to 30 million churchgoers were singing it weekly. Zschech served as Hillsong’s worship pastor from 1996 to 2007, producing over 20 albums for the Hillsong Music label.
Hillsong United, the church’s youth band, pushed further. Their 2013 single “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail),” from the album Zion, spent 48 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot Christian Songs chart and became the first Christian Songs chart-topper to crack the Hot 100.
Chris Tomlin became the dominant figure in American worship music. A Texan who co-founded Passion Conferences with Louie Giglio in 1997, Tomlin built a catalog of congregational standards: “How Great Is Our God,” “Holy Is the Lord,” “Our God.” His 2004 album Arriving began his domination of the Christian charts, and by 2025 he had accumulated 21 number-one singles. Bethel Music, a collective based at Bethel Church in Redding, California, emerged between 2009 and 2013 as another worship powerhouse, running an on-campus worship school that drew students worldwide.
Beyond the Comfort Zone
Steven Curtis Chapman holds the record for most Dove Awards: 59 wins, including seven Artist of the Year trophies. His 1992 album The Great Adventure went Platinum and won four Dove Awards plus the Grammy for Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album. His significance lies less in sales than in proving CCM could sustain long careers built on craft.
The genre’s most surprising expansion came through hip-hop. Lecrae, operating through his own Reach Records label out of Atlanta, released Anomaly on September 9, 2014. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, the first album ever to top both the Billboard 200 and the Gospel Albums chart simultaneously, proving Christian content could succeed in hip-hop without Nashville’s traditional infrastructure.
Lauren Daigle repeated Amy Grant’s crossover feat for a new generation. Her 2018 album Look Up Child debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, the highest-charting Christian album by a woman in over 20 years. The New York Times noted she had crossed into pop “with greater success than anyone since Amy Grant in the early ’90s.” Her single “You Say” won two Grammys.
Essential Listening
- Larry Norman – Only Visiting This Planet (1972)
- Keith Green – No Compromise (1978)
- Amy Grant – Heart in Motion (1991)
- Michael W. Smith – Go West Young Man (1990)
- Steven Curtis Chapman – The Great Adventure (1992)
- DC Talk – Jesus Freak (1995)
- Hillsong Worship – Shout to the Lord (1996)
- Switchfoot – The Beautiful Letdown (2003)
- Chris Tomlin – Arriving (2004)
- Lecrae – Anomaly (2014)
- Hillsong United – Zion (2013)
- Lauren Daigle – Look Up Child (2018)