Lauren Daigle says the song she uses to test her motives onstage carries the memory of a friend who never lived to hear its release.
“Even in the midst of our suffering, even in the midst of adversity, it has to be a hallelujah,” the Grammy-winning Christian singer told Bible teacher Jeff Cavins during an interview for Hallow’s 2026 Lent prayer challenge.
Daigle was describing “Let It Be A Hallelujah,” which she wrote with Swedish songwriter Jonas Myrin and the late songwriter-producer Busbee.
“And we were in the co-write and didn’t know,” Daigle said after explaining that Busbee had glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor.
The songwriters created the track years before anyone heard it, during the stretch between Daigle’s 2015 debut album, How Can It Be, and her 2018 breakthrough, Look Up Child, according to her official biography. Busbee, whose real name was Michael James Ryan, received his diagnosis later and died Sept. 29, 2019, at 43, according to the Recording Academy.
His résumé ran through pop and country music, including work with Maren Morris, Shakira, Lady A and Adam Lambert. Yet the story Daigle told Cavins was not about a list of hits. It was about the terrible weight that settled onto a song written to praise God in every season.
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“Here we are writing a song about, in even the worst of times, like our life has to be a hallelujah to the Lord,” Daigle said. “It has to just ring true.”
The song waited in the vault for years. When Centricity Music finally released it in 2025, the label called it “a passionate dedication to living a life that matters” and said it marked a snapshot of Daigle’s life between her first two major albums.
“Eight years have passed since we wrote this song, a lot has happened since then,” Daigle said when the single arrived. “I’m so grateful to have this song back in my life at this time, because had it been released after we’d written it, I wouldn’t have really understood it.”
Listeners did not leave the rediscovered song in the past. By March 2026, “Let It Be A Hallelujah” led Billboard’s Christian Airplay chart, Billboard reported.
For Daigle, though, its real measure comes in the middle of a concert, when cheers can blur the line between worship and celebrity.
“Whenever I’m on stage, it’s my litmus test,” she said. “Am I on stage to get the hallelujah?”
“Do I love the applause, or am I saying, ‘God, take this applause and let it be glory to you’?” she continued.
That question gives the song a sharper edge than a tidy message about staying positive. Daigle is not pretending grief disappears when believers praise. She is asking where the glory goes when life breaks — and when the room stands to applaud.
The loss of Busbee made that choice costly rather than theoretical. Years later, every performance lets Daigle answer it again: the hallelujah belongs to God.
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