The frontman says he settled on his answer before the first interview, and picked the most loaded phrase available to him.
John Cooper worked out what he was going to say about Skillet‘s faith before anyone asked him.
The frontman and bassist told CCM Magazine that when the band began crossing from Christian rock into the mainstream, he made a decision about how to handle the question he knew was coming, and has not moved from it since.
“Yeah, I think when somebody says, ‘What would you say is the reason you’ve been able to do it?’ I usually just say, especially if who I’m talking to is not necessarily a person of faith and they don’t understand providence, and I just say, ‘Look, I do think we were very authentic. We’ve always been authentic. We’ve always been very open about who we are,'” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
He described the reasoning in blunter terms.
“I made the decision, when we were making that crossover, going into interviews… I knew there was going to be some people that were, like, not down with the Jesus stuff,” Cooper continued. “And I just made the decision on the front end, because there had been a few bands that have crossed over, and they ought to do what they believe is right. And I’m not being critical towards them by any means, but as a Christian music fan, I know what I want to see a Christian artist say in that interview. And so I just decided, if they say, ‘Are you a Christian band?’ I’d [say], ‘Absolutely. [I am] proud to be a Jesus freak.’ It’s like on the front end. It’s sort of like you’re smacking the bully. If somebody makes fun of you on that first day of school, you gotta make fun of their mama so bad so that they never make fun of you again. You gotta smack the bully.”
The phrase carries weight in the world Cooper came out of. “Jesus Freak” is the title of the 1995 DC Talk album and single that did more than any other record to make Christian rock commercially viable in America. Skillet formed in Memphis the year after it came out.
Cooper recalled one of the first times he was asked directly, around the point “Monster” was gaining traction at rock radio.
“When we just started, I remember going into one of my first interviews. Our song ‘Monster‘ was beginning to hit at radio. And we sat down, and I was so thankful that they interviewed [me]. And [the interviewer] said, ‘Okay, now some people are saying you guys are, like, Christians or something. That can’t be true, right?’ And I said, ‘Oh, absolutely. We’re Christians. Being a Christian is so much more important to me than being a rock star. I play music to express my love for God.’ And [his] jaw dropped,” he recalled.
“Monster” came from Awake in 2009 and became the song that carried the band well beyond its original audience. It is now certified six-times platinum, and the band say it has passed five billion streams worldwide and sits in Spotify‘s Billions Club.
Asked to account for the crossover, Cooper put it down to the songs rather than the message, and to listeners caring less about the subject matter than the industry assumed.
He said: “I think it’s that authenticity, and I do think that at the time there wasn’t as much of a… I used to always say I think that people would like Skillet if they just could hear it, and we don’t know how to get to those fans. And I don’t really know if they really care if you’re Christian, atheist, Buddhist. I’m not sure they care. I think they just wanted to hear some rock music. And I think they connected with the songs. And we meet people every show. They’re, like, ‘I’m not really into the Jesus stuff, but your music makes me feel good.’ Sometimes we meet people that say, ‘I wasn’t into the Jesus stuff, but your music brought me to God. Your music got me into rehab, and in rehab I met Jesus and my life changed.’ But it’s all that stuff. That’s all providence of God stuff.”
Skillet release After The Storm, a six-song EP, on October 9. They are putting it out independently.
Two tracks are already available. “Scream” arrived first, followed by “Lift Me Up” on August 15 with an anime-styled lyric video. David Cowell of Sleep Theory produced the EP with Korey Cooper, the band’s guitarist and keyboard player and John‘s wife. The band describe it as a return to heavier ground and their most personal record, written out of a period of betrayal, grief and perseverance.
A United States headline run follows, the “Comatose: 20 Years, Still Screaming” tour with Live Nation, beginning in October and marking two decades since Comatose.
The band say they now average more than 12 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and that their European tour earlier this year drew their largest overseas crowds, including a ticket sales record at the Zénith in Paris. Their 2025 Christmas single “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” topped five Billboard charts, and they have also launched a graphic novel series, Eden, with Z2.
Across nearly thirty years the band report sales in excess of 23 million albums, two Grammy nominations, a Billboard Music Award, three top five debuts on the Billboard 200 and RIAA certifications on twelve singles and four albums.
