The new Christian rock.

Tonight is Dallas, Texas. Delirious? are playing the 7,000-seat basketball stadium at SMU, also known as Southern Methodist University - their 60th American concert of the year. Radio 1 won't air their music, they have almost no profile in the British media, but in the past 12 months they have played live to one million people in 10 different countries and sold two million albums. [...]
Delirious? are the leading British exponents of the new Christian rock, a hard-working, ambitious band on the rise, usually able to sell out 5,000- to 10,000-seat arenas in America.
Earlier this year they headlined a Christian music festival in Pennsylvania with 80,000 people in the audience, their biggest gig to date. Last time they played Dallas, they drew a crowd of 10,000 under their own name. 'We must have been crap,' says Jon Thatcher, because tonight the stadium is three-quarters empty.
Later they find out the reason for the poor turn-out: the Billy Graham evangelical crusade is in town and has siphoned away most of their fans. [...]
Delirious? have sold out Wembley Stadium, for example, with virtually no radio airplay or media hype. Their singles usually reach the lower end of the Top 20, and all three of their albums made it into the Top 40, but this undervalues their true popularity in Britain. None of their sales through bookshops and mail order - which constitute the majority - counts towards their placing in the pop charts.

posted by James Russell | 4:49 PM