The Jonas Brothers, who your teenage daughter probably loves.
New Kids on the Block, who maybe YOU once loved if you were a teenage girl in their heyday.
The “Mamma Mia!” soundtrack, who your mom and grand-mama probably like.
But keeping hot company with these popular-music brand names is none other than Chris Tomlin, the Christian contemporary solo artist.
Tomlin’s new “Hello Love” CD, fueled by the hit song “Jesus Messiah,” is up in pretty rare air for a “religious” music artist, at number 9 on the latest Billboard charts.
The new release, out only since Sept. 2, is showing itself to be everything Tomlin’s fans had hoped it would be.
As Billboard notes, “Tomlin is a successful singer and songwriter whose 2005 album “Arriving” has sold over 500,000 copies, and whose compositions “Holy Is the Lord” and “How Great Is Our God” are among the most popular contemporary songs in the world’s churches, being sung by millions of Christians at worship services every week.”
It also notes how native Texan Tomlin accepted Christ at age 9, enrolled at Texas A&M in the early ’90s to study medicine, but became active in a campus worship and Bible study group called “Breakaway,” led by a young pastor named Louie Giglio.
Many of us know the rest of the story so far: Tomlin’s heartfelt, simple-but-profound worship music has won over millions of fans.
And like Casting Crowns is led by a youth pastor, Mark Hall, Tomlin for several years did his performing while not serving on a church staff, in his case at Stone Community Church in Austin, Tex.
Tomlin this spring left the Texas church, which he had helped plant, to start a new church in Atlanta with Giglio.
As someone who’s played “Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)” with our church worship band, I know that a copyright organization is right when it notes that Tomlin, not Michael W. Smith or Twila Paris, is the most-sung Christian artist in the U.S.
And now a whole bunch of music fans are wondering who this Chris Tomlin guy is at # 9 on Billboard.