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What Makes Popular Christian Music “Popular”? | 51www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/2, 41–57 Lauren Daigle: “You Say” American musician Lauren Daigle (born 1991) writes most of her music as well as her lyrics.42 Her early career has an interesting parallel to that of Koe- nige & Priester, for she participated in the casting show American Idol be- tween 2010 and 2012.43 Daigle stated in an interview given in 2014 that her last participation, in 2012, was spiritually important to her,44 and indeed a strong commitment to Christianity is important for musicians from the PCM genre as a whole, as it contributes to their acceptance by the desired target group. The song I will explore in this segment is titled “You Say” and was released in Daigle’s 2018 album Look Up Child. As of June 2020, the official video clip has had around 157 million views on YouTube, and the song has been streamed over 235 million times on Spotify. The first musical association stirred for me by the song was with the British pop singer Adele (e. g. her song “Hello”45) – a comparison frequently evoked by music journalists.46 Daigle’s “You Say” is ar- ranged in the style of a piano pop ballad in the key of F major, and in terms of the song’s harmony, its chord progression focuses on a four-chord turnaround progression of F – Am – Dm – B♭ (tonal-functionally represented as I–III–VI–IV), which remains constant over the course of the song, an approach that can be identified in various secular pop ballads in recent years – very prominently in Emeli Sandé’s “Read All About It (Pt. III)”.47 Despite the consistent repetition of this chord progression for over four and a half minutes, the song is by no means monotonous, by virtue of the light, yet sophisticated arrangement (e. g. the subtle adjustment to instrumentation for different segments of the song), as well as Daigle’s expressive voice, which contributes to the affective potential of the song. The production of the song is perfect for the chosen style of a modern pop ballad. At the musical level, only the short “I” vocaliza- tions in the chorus provide an indication of a religious context, based on the resemblance to a gospel choir. Daigle uses these gospel-choir-like vocaliza- tions in various songs on the album. The lyrics do not significantly differ from secular pop songs. Where the PCM approach is often more direct, Christian references or rather the potentially 42 Look Up Child (Lauren Daigle, US 2018a, Centricity), liner notes. 43 Yep 2014. 44 Yep 2014. 45 25 (Adele, US 2015, XL Recordings). 46 e. g. Harrington 2019. 47 “Read All About It (Pt. III)” (Our Version of Events, Emeli Sandé, GB 2012, Virgin).