Have you ever seen somebody snort cocaine from the earpiece of a pair of cheap sunglasses? I have while waiting to watch an eccentric set from Sufjan Stevens in a sea of thousands of other Coachella Goers. His performance yielded six costume changes including a suit covered in balloons, apparently not outlandish for the Detroit-born performer.
Just a few hours before, R&B singer Gallant rocked the Mojave stage with his buttery smooth falsetto and erratic dance moves reminiscent of Lorde’s now-iconic style. Jaden Smith watched in the front row of the VIP section, mesmerized by Gallant’s showmanship and vocal range. I too watched as Gallant bounded across the stage wailing “I loved in cold blood and got used to it. Angels say trust the detox but I’m shaking. I need it like bourbon in my coffee cup.”
So what do artists Sufjan Stevens and Gallant have in common? Well, they’re both really freaking talented for starters but beyond that, they share a common faith in Jesus Christ.
Stevens began his Weekend 2 set with an amen and a declaration: “This is the church of Coachella." Aside from some of his lyrics which are imbued with spiritual ideas, that was the extent of his religious expression during his near 60 minutes on stage. Yet the totality of his performance, from the neon outfits to the carefree dancing of his backup singers to the expert musicianship exhibited by his entire band, was probably a better expression of God’s love for humanity than sharing bible verses between songs. “My music is just about story-telling,” Stevens once said. “I don’t have much to say, and I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind. I’m just singing through conviction about what I love and what I care about, starting with the very small.”
Gallant’s performance was much more conservative, relying on only a drummer, a keyboard player, a guitarist, and his own pipes to create his whole sound. His small ensemble sounded fuller than many other groups toting 8+ musicians on stage at Coachella, a testament to both Gallant’s tight orchestration and powerful voice.
If you didn’t know he was a Christian going into the set, you wouldn’t know it by the end either. And that’s largely to do with the Maryland singer’s style of music itself. Gallant has a knack for crafting babymakers, soulful grooves that you’d add to the same playlist as Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On”. Lyrically, however, his songs are clean. At the very least and as far as I’m aware, there’s nothing in his repertoire that turns heads as much as Sufjan Stevens’ line “You checked your texts while I masturbated” from his song “All Of Me Wants All Of You” which he performed.
If you watched either of their performances, you noticed an undeniable authenticity and sincerity in the way each commanded the stage. Perhaps this was most evident when Steven’s made the audience confront the realities of death head-on by reminding the crowd that they and everyone they love are all going to die, something Stevens has been coming to terms with himself after the recent passing of his mother. You could call their shows lots of things, but phoned-in isn’t one of them. And that seems to be one of the key differences that help separate these artists from the Christian music paradigm which often feels contrived and formulaic.
I believe this is why Gallant and Stevens were able to connect with a diverse Coachella audience so well, an audience that, as a whole, doesn’t reflect a bible-based worldview. During Gallant’s performance, I witnessed a girl rolling on ecstasy being held up by her friends, people passing blunts, and a drunk man sipping alcohol through a large straw protruding from his backpack. This is all standard Coachella affair; even the three men doing lines of coke on the tips of sunglasses didn’t surprise me too much. I can only imagine that the makeup of the ‘Chella crowd isn’t representative of the audiences typically drawn in by these artists. Yet they successfully demonstrated how to fully engage large diverse audiences without alienating anyone or engaging in the culture itself.
Still, I find it concerning that musicians with a Christian background capable of garnering widespread appeal is a breath of fresh air rather than the norm. I go out of my way to avoid Christian music outside of a church setting and I know I’m not alone.
Music created by Christians — and other forms of art for that matter — hasn’t always been met with sighs and sneers. In the bigger scheme of history, today’s disdain is a fairly recent phenomenon — an anomaly, even. For centuries, Christians dominated the arts and shaped culture, from Michelangelo and Van Gogh to Bach and Beethoven to Tolkien and Eliot. It wasn’t until the 20th century that a shift took place, specifically in the area of music.
- David Roark from “How Sufjan Stevens Subverts the Stigma of Christian Music”
Sufjan Stevens invited Gallant onto the stage for his finale. The duo, who’ve previously collaborated in the studio and even toured together, paid tribute to Prince with an endearing rendition of the late icon’s flagship song “Purple Rain”. Gallant, perhaps the only performer at Coachella who could pull off singing the song in an honoring way, also brought the guitarist from his band who produced a face-melting guitar solo that Prince would’ve been proud of. Stevens, with a warm smile and encouraging words, created an atmosphere of sincere remembrance for the deceased pop star. The cover was a thoughtful send-off, even more impressive given that they only had a day to orchestrate the whole thing.
And no other moment could probably describe the growing influence of Christian artists Sufjan Stevens and Gallant in a world that grows more adverse to Christians every day. Playing to a captivated crowd of at least 5,000 people by conservative estimates, they had the perfect platform for sharing any agenda they wanted to. Instead of preaching the gospel, they decided to honor the life of man who was a gender-fluid sex icon with questionable religious beliefs and who literally turned himself into a symbol. And when you consider that Jesus hung out with thieves, adulterers, murders, and all sorts of people who fell way short of the religious standards of the day, perhaps there’s no greater expression of their faith and love than to perform with all their hearts a stirring musical eulogy to one of the most misunderstood pop icons of the generation.
