Tony Cummings reports on the one-time member of Hillsong Young & Free, AODHAN KING

Aodhan King

Aodhan King was born on Christmas day 1992 in Sydney, Australia. His Christian parents took him each week to Sydney's world famous megachurch Hillsong. Unsurprisingly, Aodhan was converted and by 2004 was involved in Hillsong's children's ministry. With a natural gift in music things continued to develop musically and spiritually for Aodhan and in 2012 he helped form Hillsong Young & Free, a collective of 16 young teenagers gifted enough to deliver worship music which was truly youth-relevant. Read a Hillsong Young & Free statement, "Having run our Friday night youth programmes online for most of the year, the moment the opportunity arose to sing new songs with people became an option, we threw ourselves at it."

Often featuring the songs and lead voice of Aodhan, Hillsong Young & Free (also known as Hillsong Y&F) quickly established Christian radio success in Australia, the USA and Britain. Hillsong Y&F enjoyed phenomenal airplay success with a grand total of 16 radio hits and several of them, such as "Never Have I Ever", "Sinking Deep", "Phenomena (Da Da Remix)" and "Let Go" have all the uplifting quality which will connect with any age whether they're sung in churches or listened to on the radio. Read a Y&F collective statement, "Our greatest hope and prayer has always been that our songs would bring people closer to Jesus and compel those who don't know him to start the journey of discovering who he is."

In 2023 Aodhan relocated from Sydney to Los Angeles and began working on his debut solo album, 'Beyond Us'. He told the air1.com website, "When I was part of Young & Free, it was such a collaborative experience. There was so much going on in the life of the church that, at a certain point, you feel like your whole life is laid out before you. You've got this event, then this conference, and then you're going on this tour; and you don't have much say in a lot of it. You can kind of predict what your next year will look like very easily. And so then I go into a solo career and I'm like, 'Oh, wait. Now I have all the control over what I do.' And so that was definitely a big change and something I was leery of when I did make the jump to doing my own thing. I had to become more decisive. I had to become really clear in what I wanted to do and why I was doing it. But I don't think I was scared so much as I was excited to embrace a different season. I'd been involved with Young & Free for so long, and it was amazing to collaborate with all the guys and feel that our wins were collective; but our losses also felt collective. We wore that together. I had been talking about doing the move [to America] for a long time. With Young & Free, we were spending so much of the year here anyway, so I think I made that decision before [the pandemic]. I was committed to moving to America, but I think a big reason I've stayed is because of what I'm doing. With my solo stuff, it makes sense for me to be here."

One of the many outstanding tracks on 'Beyond Us' is "Time", a poignant ballad duet with the most popular singer in the world of Christian music, Lauren Daigle. The song, one of several from the album making the Cross Rhythms playlist, focused on trusting God's timing. It echoed Ecclesiastes 3: 11 that God makes all things beautiful in their proper season.

One of Aodhan's many memories about the album recording session was adding the strings. "We had this orchestra in Budapest play on a few songs. 'Time' with Lauren was one of them. Before we added strings, that song was really empty; it was kind of just piano and an SPD drum kit. We watched the orchestra play it on a live stream. They're really strict on the time they allot you. I think they gave us 60 minutes on the dot, and there's a countdown clock. The moment it hits that number, they have to put everything down. So you have to get it right in the moment. That was a cool experience."

Now his radio hit "Without You" is connecting with the large swathe of Aodhan followers. Its lyrics tell a personal story: "I can't live without you/I can't do this solo/I don't know my way alone/I don't wanna go if you don't." He told Rhema.cc, "It's the story of me trusting God and asking him to light the way, to go before me. It was a song that I wrote just before I moved to America and took the leap of faith to pursue my own thing. It's a really special song to me... I think I'll come back to that [song] for the rest of my life."