One of Christian rock's most enduring bands, Australia's
Newsboys first rose to popularity in the 1990s, becoming perennial chart-toppers with a global audience who followed them through three distinctive eras, each led by different frontmen. After building their foundation with singer
John James, they enjoyed a second decade of mainstream pop success in the 2000s behind
Peter Furler, who was himself succeeded by another Christian legend in
dc Talk's
Michael Tait in 2010. Along the way, they experimented with various facets of rock, pop, and more straightforward worship music, notching various Grammy nominations, gold records, and over 30 number one singles. An expanded lineup eventually coalesced after
Furler's return, resulting in the
Furler/
Tait-fronted supergroup
Newsboys United, who issued a studio album in 2019. Sans
Furler,
Newsboys returned two years later with their 20th album,
Stand.
Newsboys formed in the Queensland resort town of Mooloolaba in the late '80s around a core membership of
John James,
Peter Furler, and
Phil Joel. Though they were panned early in their career for a perceived over-reliance on religious clichés in their lyrics,
Newsboys later grasped secular music's alternative revolution in the early '90s for an image makeover, with good results. With
James on lead vocals and a secure guitarist,
Jody Davis, in place, the group gained a string of number one singles on the Christian charts in the mid-'90s and received more coverage in secular media outlets than most CCM bands of their time.
In 1998, after six albums with the band he helped found,
James departed and
Furler took over as frontman on
Step Up to the Microphone, the group's first album for major-label Virgin. The '70s-inspired
Love Liberty Disco appeared a year later. In celebration of the new millennium,
Newsboys also observed their own career with the greatest-hits package
Shine...The Hits, issued in fall 2000. Their most elaborate work to date,
Thrive, was released in 2002 and led to one of their biggest CCM hits ever, "It Is You." The band issued
Adoration: The Worship Album in April 2003. That record included both originals and
Newsboys versions of well-known worship songs.
Guitarist
Davis left
Newsboys in late 2003 in order to care for his daughter, and Bryan Olesen took his place for a little over a year. He left in 2004 to work on his own band, Casting Pearls, just after
Newsboys released their second worship album,
Devotion. Paul Coleman, an Aussie singer/songwriter, came aboard as the group's new guitarist, and the next two years found the band touring the globe and working on the songs that would become their first pop album in four years,
Go. Arriving in October 2006, it was the first to be released on the
Newsboys' own Inpop Records and the last to feature founding member
Joel, who left shortly afterward.
At the beginning of 2009, following a year of touring, Coleman left the band to go back to his solo career and
Jody Davis returned. More shockingly perhaps,
Furler announced soon afterward that he was going to scale back his involvement in
Newsboys, no longer touring with them but instead staying behind the scenes as a songwriter/vocalist. His replacement came from one of the other titans of Christian rock, namely
Michael Tait of
dc Talk. Before
Tait took over entirely, the band released one last album with
Furler as lead singer,
In the Hands of God, in May 2009. By September of that year,
Furler was gone and
Tait took over vocals for the group's next album, 2010's Born Again, which debuted at number four on the Billboard 200. The new-look
Tait-led
Newsboys returned in 2011 with the studio album God's Not Dead, and in 2013 they issued the well-received
Restart, their 16th studio LP. Another worship album, the hymn-centric
Hallelujah for the Cross arrived in 2013, followed in 2016 by
Love Riot, which saw
Newsboys heading back in a pop-oriented direction.
A year later, both
Furler and
Joel joined up with the group for the lengthy
Newsboys United retrospective tour. Parlaying the tour's success into a new studio release, this expanded version of the band -- billed as
Newsboys United -- issued the
United LP in May 2019. It landed in the Top 20 of the Billboard 200. The four-piece of
Tait,
Davis, and longtime members
Duncan Phillips (drums) and
Jeff Frankenstein (keyboards) then delivered the hook-driven
Stand in late 2021. ~ John Bush