A friend and I have been debating for the last few months over which band/artist is currently the biggest (i.e. most popular) to come out of the Christian music market. He fervently declared it was Skillet, whose Awake album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Albums chart this past August. That’s certainly the highest position to date for a Christian artist, but as I pointed out to my friend, it means nothing—it could have been a slow week for new releases. Still, the album has already sold in excess of 200,000 copies in 3 months time.

I countered that Switchfoot, Flyleaf, Relient K, or even Steven Curtis Chapman might potentially sell better, thus demonstrating they were more popular. Not so. Whereas Skillet sold 67,000 copies of Awake in its first week, Flyleaf debuted at No. 8 and sold 56,000 copies of Memento Mori, and Switchfoot debuted at No. 13 with 39,000 copies of Hello Hurricane. Neither Relient K nor Steven Curtis Chapman cracked the Top 20.

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