Newsboys - Two for One Step up & Love Liberty (CD)
- New Factory Sealed
- 2009 EMI CMG
- 2DISC
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 all 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.
- Step Up to the MicrophoneNewsboys 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 early in its career the band was panned for a perceived over-reliance on religious clichés in its 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 withe 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 issued in spring 2002 and led to one of their biggest CCM hits ever, "It Is You."
