This summer, mainstream pop sounds a lot like church.
Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” swells with piano chords and choir-like vocals. Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” builds like a stadium-ready anthem, each verse pulling toward an explosive chorus that could just as easily soundtrack a worship night. Even Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” leans on the language of sin, redemption and grace. None of these songs are about God. They’re about love, heartbreak and self-reflection. And yet, if you closed your eyes, you could almost mistake them for worship.
That uncanny resemblance has critics scrambling for labels. Vox recently dubbed the trend “secular worship,” while others have floated terms like “tradpop,” pointing out the music’s overt sincerity and traditional values. Whatever you call it, the fact is clear: for the first time in recent memory, multiple chart-topping songs are borrowing the sonic and lyrical DNA of faith-adjacent music at the same time, even though they live squarely in the mainstream.
Take Warren, for example. A Christian himself, Warren has never marketed his music to Christian radio. “Ordinary” is a straightforward love song for his wife. But sonically, it has the same architecture as a worship anthem: quiet verses, swelling dynamics, a chorus that lands like a corporate singalong.
Boone’s “Beautiful Things” isn’t about God either. It’s about holding onto life’s joys before they slip away. But it arrives dressed in the language of reverence. The result is a pop song that feels liturgical, even if the lyrics stay secular.
These two have been the headline acts of the “tradpop” moment — both reaching the Hot 100’s top tier, both racking up hundreds of millions of streams. But they’re not alone. Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” may not invoke God, but its earnestness and confessional tone fit the same cultural hunger. Lewis Capaldi’s piano ballads drip with catharsis, while even several songs on Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department flirt with spiritual imagery in its climactic release. The connective tissue: sincerity, swelling dynamics and songs that ask to be felt communally.
This isn’t the first time pop has brushed up against religion. Hozier’s “Take Me to Church” dared listeners to belt out its sacrilegious chorus. Lana Del Rey has long wrapped her music in Christian allusions aesthetics. Kesha once pleaded with God for help in “Praying,” a track that sounded half-ballad, half-battle cry. But those were one-offs — provocations, aesthetic flourishes or tongue-in-cheek metaphors.
What’s happening now feels different. This isn’t irony. It’s not a wink at religion. These songs are delivered with a wide-eyed earnestness that cuts through years of detached, hyper-produced pop. For the first time, there’s not just one “churchy” hit. There are multiple, moving in parallel, dominating both radio and TikTok.
The sound itself is familiar because it comes from a long lineage. You can trace it back to U2’s communal anthems in the 1980s — songs designed to feel transcendent and universal, with singalong choruses that could fill a stadium. Coldplay borrowed heavily from that blueprint in the 2000s, crafting tracks like “Fix You” and “Viva La Vida” that sounded spiritual even when the lyrics weren’t.
By the 2010s, that Coldplay and U2 DNA was everywhere, from Mumford & Sons’ folk anthems to Imagine Dragons’ bombastic choruses. Arena rock became a kind of shorthand for transcendence. Now Boone and Warren are part of the latest wave of artists tapping the same emotional palette: echoing guitars, piano builds, choral swells, slow-burn dynamics that explode into catharsis. It’s the sonic equivalent of arms raised in the air — whether at a concert or in a church.
Part of the answer for why this is happening now is cultural fatigue. After years of dark-pop aesthetics and ironic detachment, listeners are craving sincerity. Hopeful, emotionally big songs cut through the noise. They offer catharsis and a sense of something bigger than the self.
Gen Z, in particular, has proven far more comfortable with vulnerability. This is the therapy generation, the group most willing to talk about mental health, gratitude and hope. They don’t need their pop music laced with irony. They want something that feels real, even if it’s melodramatic. Boone’s trembling vocals and Warren’s sweeping choruses feel like the antidote to years of cynicism.
There’s also the TikTok effect. Social media rewards songs that can soundtrack life’s big moments: weddings, reunions, montages, even breakup confessions. A song like “Beautiful Things” practically begs to be overlaid on a photo reel. Warren’s “Ordinary” has become a backdrop for countless relationship videos on social media. These aren’t just hits because they’re catchy — they’re hits because they feel universally relatable, easy to graft onto a thousand personal stories.
Part of what makes these songs stand out is their use of spiritual-adjacent language. Boone’s refrain of not wanting to lose the “beautiful things” could read like a prayer. Warren’s talk of finding something extraordinary in the ordinary echoes the kind of themes churches have preached for centuries. Even Teddy Swims’ flirtations with sin-and-redemption imagery tap into familiar religious tropes, whether they mean to or not.
That doesn’t make these Christian songs. They’re not. But they carry the residue of faith language, recontextualized into secular pop. For Christian listeners, the echoes are unmistakable. For nonbelievers, the language still resonates because it feels bigger than romance, larger than one person’s story.
All of this adds up to a fascinating feedback loop. Arena rock taught pop how to sound transcendent. Now, after years of irony, pop is circling back to arena rock’s sincerity. And in the middle of that loop is a sound so steeped in transcendence that listeners can’t quite tell if they’re hearing a worship song or a breakup ballad.
The difference is content. Worship sings to God. Tradpop sings to everything else — love, grief, gratitude, longing. But the sonic overlap is undeniable. For the first time in a long time, the Billboard charts are packed with songs that sound like they were built for megachurches, even if they were written for Spotify playlists.
The rise of tradpop and secular worship may just be a passing trend. Or it may signal a bigger cultural reset — a generation tired of cynicism, hungry for inspiration, willing to embrace sincerity in its purest form.
Either way, it’s revealing. These aren’t worship songs, but they feel like they could be. And that might be the real story: not that pop is suddenly turning religious, but that sincerity itself is back in style. And sincerity, in 2025, sounds an awful lot like church.
