Josiah Queen may look like one of Christian music's biggest young success stories, but behind the sold-out shows, viral songs and screaming fans, the 23-year-old admits there was a point when the pressure of keeping the whole thing going became almost crushing.
And one shortcut he apparently won't be taking? Letting artificial intelligence write his songs.
Queen got unusually candid during an Aug. 14 appearance on Keenan Clark's podcast, Things You DIDN'T Know About JOSIAH QUEEN, opening up about everything from career anxiety and AI to getting taken off his church payroll by his own father.
While discussing his dependence on God, Queen revealed that the explosive growth of his career has brought an uncomfortable new reality: a lot of people now depend on him.
"I got managers," Queen explained, noting that his siblings also work for him full-time. That created an increasingly heavy question in his mind: What happens if the next album flops?
"There's so much pressure on me to produce," he admitted, wondering aloud what would happen to the operation surrounding him if his next project failed to connect.
That's a surprisingly vulnerable confession from an artist whose career currently looks anything but shaky from the outside.
Queen said that by the end of last year, everything appeared to be going perfectly - the music was working, the touring schedule was growing and he was essentially living the dream he had wanted. Internally, however, he said he found himself unhappy because he had placed so much of the responsibility for keeping the machine running on himself.
His answer, he said, has been learning to hand that pressure back to God rather than trying to carry it alone.
But Queen also made another striking admission about the rapidly changing music business: don't expect a ChatGPT-written Josiah Queen song anytime soon.
Queen said he is "definitely against" using AI to write his lyrics, even though he acknowledged how easy the technology could make songwriting.
He even name-checked ChatGPT - but only as something he uses for practical searches such as finding restaurants.
"I use ChatGPT to look up things, restaurants," Queen said, while arguing that AI has its place. When it comes to songwriting, though, he suggested that outsourcing the creative process could become part of a larger cultural drift toward depending on everything except God.
That distinction is especially interesting for an artist whose songs have become popular precisely because they sound unusually personal and Scripture-soaked. Queen told Clark that his writing is rooted in his belief that God's Word - rather than his own cleverness - is what ultimately has power to change people.
And apparently Queen isn't interested in watering that down at his concerts either.
He said he and wife Trinity Queen deliberately set aside around 10 to 15 minutes during shows to read Scripture and pray, even though they have encountered people who would rather the night remain strictly entertainment. Queen's response? If nobody ever objects, he worries they may be playing things "a little too safe."
The couple's ministry involvement goes back long before the big stages. Queen recalled working at his father's church, where he cleaned floors, stacked chairs and helped write children's ministry curriculum. But as his music career exploded and touring kept him away for months at a time, his father eventually had to take him off the payroll.
Queen laughed about previous headlines portraying him as a "fired janitor," but clarified that he wouldn't exactly call it being fired.
Instead, his father essentially told him that after being absent for roughly four months, he simply couldn't continue paying him for a weekday church job Queen was no longer able to perform.
Talk about getting humbled by Dad just as your music career is taking off.
Queen has nevertheless kept his family extremely close as his profile has grown. His brother Caleb moved from playing bass to serving as tour manager, while younger brother Elijah plays drums. Queen said having his brothers and Trinity alongside him makes touring something he actually wants to keep doing.
He has also resisted another almost obligatory move for rising Christian artists: relocating permanently to Nashville.
Queen said Tauren Wells was among the established artists who gave him one memorable piece of early career advice: don't move to Nashville. Queen ultimately stayed connected to his Florida hometown, explaining that Nashville feels like work while home allows him to remain surrounded by people who knew him before the fame.
And despite all the career talk, the interview ended exactly where Queen seems determined to keep his priorities - with prayer.
Clark asked him to pray for listeners, and Queen prayed that they would find Christian community and be drawn closer to Jesus.
For an artist whose career is moving at lightning speed, Queen's biggest revelation may be that success hasn't made him feel more invincible.
It has made him more aware of just how much he has to lose.
And while AI might be able to generate a chorus in seconds, Queen seems determined that the songs carrying his name will still come the old-fashioned way - through Scripture, lived experience, prayer and, apparently, a healthy fear that the next record could flop.
