There seems to be a fascination with Jesus amongst certain musicians who outwardly claim to not believe in any sort of god. As a Christian who also loves good music, I have many questions for a couple artists whose work I admire. To be specific, I want to talk about the Gospel with Matty Healy and Phoebe Bridgers.

Matty Healy, frontrunner of The 1975, is not afraid to mention Jesus and Christian ideology in his songs. From a fan’s point of view, Healy seems to have somewhat of a god complex himself, thinking that his music is groundbreaking and life-changing. After getting clean from drug abuse a few years ago, he stated in an interview that he doesn’t believe in the existence of God but will not shut down a conversation about the topic with anyone.

If you dive deeper into The 1975’s discography, you can see a common theme: every album has at least one song related to God or belief in a god or Jesus. On their self-titled album, the track “Antichrist” has the lyric “How can I relate to somebody who doesn’t speak? I feel like I’m just treading water” amongst other lyrics that bring the listener back to the name of the song. One their second album, “If I Believe You” is perhaps the most outright song about this topic. “And I’m broken and bleeding//And begging for help(there’s no use singing a song)//And I’m asking you Jesus, show yourself” is sung in the chorus. In their most recent album the song “Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America,” a duet with Phoebe Bridgers, mentions Him yet again: “I’m in love with Jesus Christ//He’s so nice//I’m in love, I’ll say it twice.” The songs seem to both wrestle with the belief in Jesus while also mocking those who do believe in Him.

That’s when Phoebe Bridgers comes on the scene. Bridgers is a singer-songwriter with two solo albums. I first noticed her mockery of Christianity on Twitter, where she sometimes tweets as if she IS an ultra conservative Christian, however she is very clearly agnostic or atheist. When looking at her discography she mentions “screaming at the evangelicals” in one of her tracks. She is also featured on the “Jesus Christ” track from the recent The 1975 album. Additionally, the majority of her songs deal with topics like death, depression, the afterlife and injustice. It is almost as if she is fascinated by sin and how it contrasts with God.

So what is it about these genius songwriters and their infatuation with the idea of god? They are contradicting themselves daily. One could say they are so brilliant of an artist that it is hard for them to fully admit they are wrong about God. Perhaps they do not want to give up the life they live to surrender to a God of grace and love because they do not yet fully know all that He is about. Hopefully one day someone will enter their lives that can introduce them to the true Gospel and all that Jesus really is.