It’s not often you see someone step away from one of the most influential worship collectives in the world. Yet that’s exactly what happened when Aodhan King—best known for his work with Hillsong Young & Free—found himself at a crossroads during a period of upheaval for the church and its music. Between COVID-era uncertainty, personal soul-searching and the shifting landscape of Hillsong at large, King realized it was time to break new ground.
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His journey hasn’t been all smooth sailing, but it’s been undeniably transformative. King’s new solo worship album is both a departure from the polished, group-centric dynamic fans came to love and an arrival at something raw, authentic and profoundly personal. Beneath the anthems and upbeat tracks is a thread of honesty about leaving a familiar safety net, grappling with shifting faith communities and pressing into God’s presence even when the future feels shaky. It’s a leap of faith—both musically and spiritually—and King’s candid reflections carry the kind of weight that resonates far beyond a Sunday morning service.
We caught up with King to talk about what prompted him to strike out on his own, how creating a worship album gave him the freedom to throw out old boundaries and why he’s giving fellow believers across genres a space to celebrate Jesus in fresh ways. Here, King shares the process of reclaiming his voice, rediscovering his calling and reminding us that worship doesn’t need a specific context to unite hearts in praise.
Why did you want to make a solo project?
I’ve been part of Hillsong for many years and was part of Young & Free. In a lot of ways, that’s all I ever imagined doing. I loved being part of a group. I love being a community. The idea of doing something on my own never came up until COVID. During COVID, we were at home by ourselves and Hillsong started to look quite different. A lot of things were going on.
The future of what Young & Free and worship at Hillsong looked like became uncertain. Naturally, music’s always been an outlet for me. I processed a lot of that by writing. Over the course of a few years, I went down different roads. I started off in a pop direction.
I moved to America to do that. Writing songs for Jesus and worship songs became an anchor for me in a season that felt so uncertain. There was uncertainty in the world, particularly in our Hillsong world. We had no idea what was going on. Before I knew it, I thought, I think I have a collection of songs here that maybe make sense to be put together.
What has it been like creating a project for yourself?
It was a similar process to making one with Hillsong. I worked with a lot of the same guys I worked with when I worked on Hillsong stuff. The writing process was similar, but there was less—when we’re writing for Young & Free and Hillsong, we’re writing for a particular context.
We’re writing for the church and the lyrics need to be a certain way. There are a lot more boundaries. We’re writing this for a church service Sunday morning, 8 a.m. Writing for my own thing, I didn’t have any of those rules. It was like, let’s just throw paint and see what works and makes sense. That was freeing. The whole process helped me find my own voice more.
With Hillsong, writing was something we loved to do, but it was also a service. You would sometimes forego what you loved in order to say, I know I don’t particularly love this idea, but I think this makes sense in the church context. I got to come back to me, saying, I’m only going to do things if I love them. That was really cool.
Did you ever think about making something other than a worship album?
This project is a full worship record, but the journey of the last three years was that I moved here with the intention of putting out a pop record. I was signed to management, was about to sign a deal, was working with A&Rs, had a full record done that was pop. Over a couple of years, it just felt like, not that it didn’t feel right, but I wasn’t having the outlet that Hillsong was.
Worship’s always been the place where I discovered my love for music in the first place. It felt like the right place. If I was going to do something on my own, that’s where I wanted to start—with a full worship record.
Is there a theme or message that ties these songs together?
There were a lot of conversations since I moved here. I had a lot of indecision about what to do with myself personally, musically and even just being in America by myself, wondering, What am I doing?
Over those years, I had friends in the music space working in different genres. It was pretty obvious that a lot of them were encouraging me in the worship space. A lot of these people also would love to sing in the worship space but haven’t had the ability to do that. They love Jesus, but they’re in a pop band, or they love Jesus and they’re in an indie rock band. If they talked about Jesus in their band, then that wouldn’t be good for them. Slowly but surely, I’d be writing songs with these guys, and it would make sense. They’d say, I’d love to sing on this. I’d say, well, how does that work?
Throughout the process of writing the record, it was obvious that the record was just this inclusive space, including voices that I know we wouldn’t have been able to use had I been in Young & Free. Not because of some legalistic reason, but because at Hillsong, we were writing songs based out of our church, so it’s the people that attend our church.
Part of the process that became freeing was that I could have Paul Klein sing on this song with me. He’s in LANY, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t need to ask anyone’s permission. He loves Jesus. He just never sung about Jesus publicly and he wants to.
The record has become a space for those people to sing worship songs. I’ve always loved the ability to allow worship to be a space that everyone can be unified in. That was the heart of it. I just wanted to break down those barriers.
Maybe they only existed within me, where you couldn’t sing worship if you weren’t at church 17,000 times a week. That was the culture that a lot of us got used to. That’s why this record feels important to me, giving voice to people that haven’t had that opportunity before.
It all felt natural to me. I’ve experienced the presence of Jesus in all of these guys’ music, even though they’re not explicitly saying Jesus. But I think what they have is a gift from God. And you can’t help but see Jesus when people actually use their talents and their God-given gifts.
How did you get connected with Paul Klein in the first place?
It’s a funny story because back in 2014, he was half-attending Hillsong in New York or LA. I was coming over to LA, and a mutual friend said, “Hey, there’s this guy you should meet who’s so talented, loves God, used to lead worship in Oklahoma. He’s been attending Hillsong. You should work with him for Young & Free.”
At the time, there was an idea that we should maybe have an American-based Young & Free movement. It was all very fresh for us. Young & Free had only been around for two years at that point. So I thought, I’ll go suss out this guy and see what it’s all about.
I came over to the States, wrote with him for a few days, and we became friends. LANY started maybe six months later. All of a sudden, his life went in a different direction, which has been amazing.
We’ve stayed in touch all those years. We’ve written a lot of songs together and we hang out. He doesn’t live far from me here, so we see each other quite often.
What’s been the response from fans about your new music?
Honestly, really sweet. For example, with the song “Thank You So Much, Jesus,” a lot of the comments said it was bringing them back to the simplicity of worship. As simple as that might be, that really is my heart. I hope it gives people a direct, clear bridge to the presence of God. That’s all it is.
It was healing for me. I’d been in years of indecision and to be honest, I felt paralyzed by those things. I lacked clarity, and worship was the space that gave me that. That’s my prayer.
I also pray that people see that if there are religious ideas that this person isn’t worthy to do this or whatnot, I hope that doesn’t exist. I hope people realize everyone is welcome to worship God. It’s not our position as people to define who can and can’t. At the end of the day, I just want people to experience Jesus. That’s what the record’s about.
