Photo via Summerfest
For King & Country
Contemporary Christian music (CCM) has often been dismissed as musically out of touch and sonically boring. But then along came the Australian-born brothers known as for KING & COUNTRY, who in 2017 released a raucous, jaw-dropping live recording of the Christmas classic “Little Drummer Boy” as a single. It sounded like Imagine Dragons and U2 jamming with Stryper.
Joel and Luke Smallbone followed that up with 2018’s Burn the Ships—a crossover success that reached the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart and helped for KING & COUNTRY collect numerous Grammy Awards and Gospel Music Association Dove Awards.
The band’s songs explore positive themes of new beginnings, forgiveness and hope. The Christian overtones are subtle, but for KING & COUNTRY’s live shows will make you a believer.
After a name change in 2012, for KING & COUNTRY released their debut album, Crave. Then came 2014’s MercyMe-influenced Run Wild. Live Free. Love Strong. Burn the Ships was next. What Are We Waiting For?, KING & COUNTRY’s latest album, dropped in March and songs like “Broken Halos,” “Hold On Pain Ends” and “Love Me Like I Am” seem to fit the world’s current state of affairs.
The Smallbones’ older sister is fellow CCM artist and Grammy winner Rebecca St. James, and the siblings grew up in a faith-filled family.
“I think … that spiritual side of what we do came very natural,” Joel Smallbone told a Central Illinois newspaper in April. “What Are We Waiting For? [is] a spiritual record, certainly, but it’s also a family record, it’s a global record. [It’s] really important as an artist to sort of engage with both the spiritual side of music and the physical side of what it means to be human in 2022.”
