Rhythm-focused hits praise! The song has spent more than 20 weeks at the top of Billboard’s Hot Christian Songs chart, but the singers and songwriters behind the song say they were initially skeptical of the song’s success.
“I don’t think anybody believed it. praise!“Except for my wife,” Brandon Lake said.
“We never knew it would actually cause a stir, we were just messing around,” said Chris Brown of Elevation Worship.
The rhythmic track was recorded in front of an audience at Elevation Church in North Carolina and features vocals from Elevation Worship members as well as Lake and Chandler Moore.
Recorded in front of a live audience, the song’s unique blend of worship and rhythm has seen it spend over 60 weeks on the Billboard charts, including 21 at the top, and the live version has been viewed nearly 100 million times on YouTube.
“I was really looking forward to the other songs too. [on the album]Lake said: “I remember going into the live recording that night and thinking, ‘Hey! praise! “At the end of the night, you finish playing. Worst case scenario, you mess up and you screw up, but at least you’ve had two hours of worship. Nobody cares, and you’re so energetic, nobody’s going to pay attention.”
Lake said it’s impossible to know how a “practice” version in the studio will translate in a live setting.
As for Elevation Worship, Brown said they recorded it mainly for fun and didn’t expect it to be a success, but when live audiences heard it for the first time, “it went wild,” he said.
“The whole place goes crazy,” Lake says. “If you haven’t seen the video, check it out. My wife said, ‘I told you, there’s something about that song.'”
This hit song is actually two songs in one.
“All the poems and bridges [in Praise!] “It was a bridge to another song,” Lake said.
The songwriters combined the verse and bridge with the well-known chorus and Moore’s singing, “Praise the Lord with every breath you have,” Lake said.
“We didn’t realize we had something really special,” Lake said, “…It just became this monster of a song. So to see it go out into the world and have that song heard in churches all over Africa and all over the world was really cool. It was really amazing.”
Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Terry Wyatt/Stringer
Michael Faust He has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years, and his work has appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, Christian Post, Leaf Chronicle, Toronto Star and Knoxville News Sentinel.
