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Pro-life anthem I Was Gonna Be has crashed uncomfortable truth into anti-life culture, in a big way.

18-year-old Rachel Holt’s new release stormed iTunes and Billboard after its 21 June release.

By 4 July, the song was within the top 10 country digital sales, and just inside the top 20 digital sales.

Holt also hit number 21 among emerging artists, as well as a wall of hate.

She told Timcast IRL,

“They can have their own opinion, but the second I do, it’s terrible. Like, ‘I’m wrong.’

“They judge your whole character based on one thing you believe in.”

While graciously acknowledging that Holt beat out the Us duet by Gracie Adams and Taylor Swift, Forbes somewhat proved Holt’s point, writing,

“Before the song, Holt had no commercial impact in the United States.”

Forbes attributed her popularity to how divided the United States is, saying,

“The tune is not subtle in its anti-abortion stance, and that’s likely exactly what propelled it to bestseller status.”

Holt “may have found her audience with politically-tinged work.”

Poignant

Written by Nashville-based songwriter Chris Wallin, I Was Gonna Be is the past-tense voice of an aborted baby girl.

Verse 1 starts with a subtle pushback,

Some don’t believe I’m a livin’ soul,
Some don’t believe I’m a livin’ soul,
If my momma could’ve just seen my face
Then maybe she would’ve had me anyway

Verse 2 carries the same weight,

And there are those who speak for me
Who fight for lives that they can’t see
But there are some who only mourn,
This life of mine if I were born.

Verses 3 and 4 go straight to the heart,

First thing I was gonna do
Was breathe and fall in love with you.
But a couple of weeks before I saw the light
Mine flickered out when you changed your mind.

I’m more than just some one-night stand
Or some burden that you think I am
And there ain’t no man who’s ever gonna be
What I was gonna be.

Wallin’s chorus, matched with Holt’s vocal delivery, lifts the lament.

Riding Holt’s voice rests the discernible shadow of an aborted baby girl’s haunting sigh.

Holt said that the first “time Wallin showed her the song, it gave her instant chills.”

“It’s a song from the baby’s point of view.”

Noting the song’s immediate impact, Wallin said on X that he was “honoured to be part of it.”

I Was Gonna Be “is already moving people in the way it was intended.”

Speaking to Timcast IRL, Wallin added,

“I started writing this song for myself. I didn’t think anyone would ever have the courage to sing it.”

Halfway through writing I Was Gonna Be, Wallin said, he met Rachel, and was convinced she was the one who needed to sing it.

“I just wanted to give a voice to the voiceless.

“Everybody talks about the other side, but they never talk about the actual baby.”

Backed by Wallin’s anti-woke newcomers, Baste Records, I Was Gonna Be is fast becoming the company’s loudest contribution towards cultural change, since its inception in January 2023.

With a similar tempo as Bob Carlisle’s massively popular Butterfly Kisses (1997), Holt’s I Was Gonna Be has greater depth.

The song joins a distinguished list of songs with indirect pro-life themes that quietly provoke controversy.

Such as guitar legend Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven, Creed’s new dad rock anthem, With Arms Wide Open, and Foo Fighters’ power ballad, Come Alive.

Holt’s and Wallin’s I Was Gonna Be is a potently relevant message for pro-choice activists demanding the right to turn the womb into a tomb.

This is a solemn, softly sung, pro-life protest in defence of the pre-born.

As Suzanne Santo – also of Baste Records – once said,

“Honest music is the only kind of music worth listening to.”

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Image courtesy of Adobe.