GHOST’s Label Didn’t Think Much Of Their Biggest Song, “Mary On A Cross”

Ghost scored their biggest hit in 2019 with the track “Mary On A Cross”. The song was the b-side to their Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic 7″ and became a supermassive hit on TikTok. The song currently has over 740 million streams on Spotify and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA) in 2022 after selling over 1 million copies in the United States alone.

Though if you ask whoever the hell Ghost frontman Tobias Forge was talking to about the single before it was release, it wasn’t all that good. According to Forge while speaking about music on the radio in an interview with The Rock Hard Radio Show With Kim Rennie, he revealed that someone at the label didn’t think the song would amount to much. Especially considering it was an “old song” fronted by Ghost‘s “original frontman Papa Emeritus Nihil back in the ’60s”.

“Yeah, possibly. Just because you mentioned radio and I’m obviously talking on the radio right now, and I must underline, underscore that I grew up with a radio on, so I have nothing against the format. I am also a songwriter and I’m also very, very interested in the art of writing hit music. So there’s nothing bad about that. But for as long as we have, with Ghost, experienced some sort of what you might call mainstream success, where radio has been an element through which greater success could be achieved, it has been a little bit of a question mark, exactly what are the elements needed in order to succeed?

“And I think that the biggest element of surprise was some years ago when I had written a song that, according to the lore, of course, was written 50 years ago, but was a song that I had written and recorded, and I showed it to the label and I was, like, ‘How about that?’ And they were, like, ‘What?’ ‘It’s pretty good. My kid likes it.’ And they were, like, ‘Okay, it’s a good song, but it’s like a B-side. It’s not meant for…’ It was just like a question mark. ‘What do you mean? It’s like an old song, right?’

“I was, like, ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s a good song. Okay, regardless, I’m gonna play it live.’ So we started playing that immediately, the moment it came out. And I felt like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing. One of the best songs I’ve ever written is like just a B-side. Fine.’ A few years later, it turned out that was gonna be, so far, the biggest song of my career. That turned a lot of heads within the label world because they were, like, ‘Oh, we didn’t know.'”

Forge continued: “What it told me was just like, we have no plan — I have no plan — so I’m not gonna chase that. I am gonna write songs — I’m gonna write the best songs I can ever write — and we’ll see what happens with them because there’s no clear way of telling exactly how it’s gonna materialize to a song that is worth anything from a hit point of view.

“And I felt that is not even a bad thing, because I’m in a great spot anyway. I can make a record filled with songs that are maybe too hard or maybe too this or too little of that or just thematically sits together. If it’s a hit, it will show itself, it will materialize. If it’s not a hit, that’s fine. We can play the other hits too. We’re blessed, for lack of a better, more fitting word, to be able to go out on tour. And we have a lot of fans and we have a lot of support anyway, and that, to me, actually alleviated me from a little bit of that stress because I’m, like, ‘I’m not gonna chase another big hit.'”

Pre-orders for Ghost‘s new record Skeletá – due out April 25 – are available here. Ghost‘s world tour also kicks off on April 15. Ghost will kick the tour off at the AO Arena in Manchester, UK and (so far) wrap things up on September 25 at the Palacio De Los Deportes in Mexico City, MX. Love it. Tickets are available here.

4/15 Manchester, UK AO Arena
4/16 Glasgow, UK OVO Hydro
4/19 London, UK The O2
4/20 Birmingham, UK Utilita Arena
4/22 Antwerp, BE Sportpaleis
4/23 Frankfurt, DE Festhalle Frankfurt
4/24 Munich, DE Olympiahalle
4/26 Lyon, FR LDLC Arena
4/27 Toulouse, FR Zénith Toulouse Métropole
4/29 Lisbon, PT MEO Arena
4/30 Madrid, ES Palacio Vistalegre
5/3 Zürich, CH Hallenstadion Zürich
5/4 Milan, IT Unipol Forum
5/7 Berlin, DE Uber Arena
5/8 Amsterdam, NL Ziggo Dome
5/10 Lodz, PL Atlas Arena
5/11 Prague, CZ O2 Arena
5/13 Paris, FR Accor Arena
5/14 Oberhausen, DE Rudolf Weber-ARENA
5/15 Hannover, DE ZAG Arena
5/17 Copenhagen, DK Royal Arena
5/20 Tampere, FI Nokia Arena
5/22 Linköping, SE Saab Arena
5/23 Sandviken, SE Göransson Arena
5/24 Oslo, NO Oslo Spektrum
7/9 Baltimore, MD CFG Bank Arena
7/11 Atlanta, GA State Farm Arena
7/12 Tampa, FL Amalie Arena
7/13 Miami, FL Kaseya Center
7/15 Raleigh, NC Lenovo Center
7/17 Cleveland, OH Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse
7/18 Pittsburgh, PA PPG Paints Arena
7/19 Philadelphia, PA Wells Fargo Center
7/21 Boston, MA TD Garden
7/22 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
7/24 Detroit, MI Little Caesars Arena
7/25 Louisville, KY KFC Yum! Center
7/26 Nashville, TN Bridgestone Arena
7/28 Grand Rapids, MI Van Andel Arena
7/29 Milwaukee, WI Fiserv Forum
7/30 St. Louis, MO Enterprise Center
8/1 Rosemont, IL Allstate Arena
8/2 Saint Paul, MN Xcel Energy Center
8/3 Omaha, NE CHI Health Center
8/5 Kansas City, MO T-Mobile Center
8/7 Denver, CO Ball Arena
8/9 Las Vegas, NV MGM Grand Garden Arena
8/10 San Diego, CA Viejas Arena
8/11 Phoenix, AZ Footprint Center
8/14 Austin, TX Moody Center
8/15 Fort Worth, TX Dickies Arena
8/16 Houston, TX Toyota Center
9/24 Mexico City, MX Palacio de los Deportes
9/25 Mexico City, MX Palacio de los Deportes