Page - 47 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/02

What Makes Popular Christian Music “Popular”? | 47www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/2, 41–57 it is to him that he lives in harmony with God and the Bible.26 On the one hand, Enns’s description can be considered an example of a classic evangelical narrative of conversion and religious awakening that echoes an evangelical dualistic worldview.27 On the other hand such a commitment seems to me to be extremely important for musicians from the genre of PCM in order to find acceptance in their “target audience” in what I would refer to as an effort in establishing “genre authenticity”. Conversely, however, such statements can lead to a backlash from outside the PCM scene, which may explain why on its Facebook page, the band describes its music as about “faith, love and hope” and notes it is “not about conveying theoretical, philosophical or even the- ological knowledge”.28 Through such statements Koenige & Priester may be attempting to reach two types of audience: for believing Christians they are demonstrating they are truly a Christian band; for broader, secular audiences they insist that they are not indoctrinating theological knowledge. Yet in con- trast to this latter aspect, the band is quoted in an interview on a Christian website as stating: “Our goal: getting young people excited about Jesus.”29 Since 2017 the song “Alles ist möglich”, from Koenige & Priester’s second stu- dio album, Heldenreise,30 has been streamed around 300,000 times on Spotify, where it is one of the band’s most successful songs. The song is arranged in the style of a modern indie pop song, using a common band instrumentation (drums, electric guitar, bass, vocals, here with three voices, plus various synthe- sizer sounds). The high production value is clearly evident to the listener, above all in relation to current recording technologies, allowing Koenige & Priester to parallel the high musical and technical standards of US-American evangelical music productions that Sebastian Emling and Jonas Schira, for example, have noted.31 Stylistic devices such as the frequency filter applied on the synthesizer – the initial focus on a narrow frequency range broadens later in the track – have been used in secular pop and Electronic Dance Music (EDM) songs in recent years, with the opening of the track “Sugar”32 by the German EDM musician Rob- in Schulz a good example. “Alles ist möglich” is in the key of B major, although it is intriguing that unlike some mainstream pop songs, the chord progression does 26 Walter 2017. 27 Emling/Schira 2017, 297. 28 Koenige & Priester 2020, info, my translation. 29 Gerth Medien 2015: “Unser Ziel: junge Menschen für Jesus zu begeistern”. 30 Koenige & Priester 2017. 31 Emling/Schira 2017, 400–401. 32 “Sugar” (Robin Schulz, DE 2015, Tonspiel/Warner Music Central Europe).