With a little promotional help from Curb Records, the song continued to storm mainstream charts for much of 2003. It was only a matter of time before stations across the country caught wind of Imagine’s success and jumped on the bandwagon.

Almost immediately, it became the station’s top requested song-a spot it would hold for the next six months. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call God’s Providence.Įventually, this modern-day version of Esther prevailed upon his hosts to put Imagine on the air.

Of course, this young man just happened to be a seminary student who’d only taken on the producer slot because he felt God wanted him to serve as a light in that dark place… The show’s producer, on the other hand, thought it was a great idea. Whether it was a joke or the listener was sincere, this crew of rush-hour shock jocks wasn’t about to honor this guy’s request. Nevertheless, a regular Fitz listener took it upon himself to repeatedly call in and demand to hear Imagine. In fact, the show featured all the crudity you’d expect from a program fashioned after the image and likeness of Howard Stern. Now, neither Fitz nor its host station- 100.3 Wild-FM-were particularly attuned to the faith-based audience. That all changed, however, when a morning radio show called “ The Fitz Radio Program” decided to give the song a spin in early 2003. More than that, how does it stay there for ten weeks? How can the same audience who rocks out to Havana metaphorically flip the dial and belt out a line about dancing for Jesus?īart Millard-the leader of MercyMe and writer behind the song-was just as surprised: “If there were a ‘Top Five’ of songs never meant to cross over, I would have thought this was one of them.” How “I Can Only Imagine” Broke Into Mainstream RadioĪfter winning song of the year at the 2002 GMA Dove Awards, Imagine had pretty much run its course on Christian radio. This simple comparison does raise an admittedly less-simple question: How does a Christian song like Imagine climb to the top spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 Single Sales chart? Now, compare that to the chorus from MercyMe‘s “ I Can Only Imagine:”

He took me back to East Atlanta, na-na-na (uh huh) Half of my heart is in Havana, ooh-na-na (ay, ay) Mainstream radio isn’t exactly where you’d go to find songs about Jesus these days.Ĭonsider the chorus to Camilia Cabello’s “ Havana,” the #1 hit on Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart at the time of this writing. The Surprising Way “I Can Only Imagine” Became a #1 Hit on Mainstream Radio

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