Why Skillet Frontman Wants to Start a ‘Revolution’ Fueled By Hope
By Movieguide® Contributor
Skillet frontman John Cooper hopes that the band’s new album will help combat the ongoing mental health crisis and direct people towards God.
“The amount of people suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts and who think that they don’t matter is so overwhelming to me. It just breaks my heart,” he told Crosswalk Headlines. “That’s one of the things I really, really care deeply about, is people that are struggling with suicidal thoughts and mental health — those kinds of things.”
Cooper explained that he views the mental health crisis as “a result of a society who has just thrown God away,” adding, “And if there is no God, they really find it hard to find a reason to live.”
“And so it’s a revolution against those things to say, ‘You matter. There is a God. He loves you. There is hope in the Earth,’” he said.
The musician referred to Skillet’s song “Revolution,” which speaks “specifically to that depression, that angst, the fact that people feel that there’s nothing left to live for.”
“And so the chorus of the song says, ‘Sing a revolution song. We’ve got the fire of hope in our hearts, march to the beat of love,’” Cooper said. “We have to tell people about the hope we found in Christ.”
Skillet’s latest release, “Unpopular,” is another song with an important message for listeners.
“‘Unpopular’ is lighthearted, but there’s a clear message,” Cooper said in a statement about the song. “So many people don’t have a place to belong. You used to know your neighbors. Our communities are online now, which contributes to the loneliness. You have powerful people telling you what reality is, what you should eat, what you should drive, and how you should live. They deem us ‘unpopular.’ In reality, we agree more than we disagree as a society. The majority of people just want to be free and they don’t really care whether or not you agree with them about everything.”
“Unpopular” is part of Skillet’s upcoming new album, Revolution, which is set to drop Nov. 1. The album is also the band’s first independent release after 20 years with Atlantic Records.
“After this long, we’ve learned enough about our audience to know what they want to hear,” Cooper told Billboard about the move. “We have a pretty good handle on that now, so it’s time for us to be pushed out of the nest, or maybe jump out of the nest.”
Movieguide® previously reported on Cooper’s commitment to sharing his faith through his music:
Cooper’s love for rock music began at a young age when he listened to “loud music” to get ready for basketball games.
“I never got ready for that basketball game and was, like, ‘Man, I feel like this is making me love the devil.’ It was just loud music, and it was cool,” he shared. “But I will say, on a deeper level, for me, I absolutely believe music belongs to God. There’s something of eternity with music.”
“The Bible doesn’t talk about music a lot. But there is something eternal. We know that the angels were singing before we were ever created. We know that music is singing and worship. We know that’s going to be for eternity—it’s one of the few things we have here that in some form is going to exist before the throne for always and always and always, when time has ended,” he added.
The musician doesn’t want Christians to let Satan steal the music that God created.
“It’s like that great old Christian song, ‘Why should the devil have all the good music?’ But we’re not going to let the enemy steal something that God created,” Cooper added.
“He may have distorted it, but we’re bringing that back under the lordship of Christ, where music and art belongs because everything is the Lord’s. The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof. Everything in it is His. So that’s kind of the way that I view it.”
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