‘American Idol’ Winner’s ‘String Cheese’ Song is the Pro-Family Anthem We Need

An unassuming 25-year-old stay-at-home mom from rural Missouri was crowned the winner of American Idol last the weekend.  She didn’t win with a power ballad or a showstopper cover. She won with a song about reheating her coffee for the third time. About Hot Wheels on the floor.  About postpartum depression — and the small hand that reached up from the couch and asked, “Mama, can you open my string cheese?”

Hannah Harper is an overnight household name.  “String Cheese” has now been viewed more than 120 million times as her “ordinary” lyrics moved judge Carrie Underwood to tears. Country legends, famous actresses and exhausted moms alike flooded social media to say the same thing: this song is my life.

The vocation Harper is singing about — faithful, exhausted, purposeful motherhood, sustained by a husband who sacrifices, a faith that anchors, and a community that shows up — is so much of what God designed family life to look like.  And yet millions of people heard it and wept because it felt like a dispatch from a world they’re not sure exists anymore. 

They’re not wrong to wonder.  Many opinion elites flat-out reject Harper’s life choices. They encourage a “me-first” approach to life and tell you that being married in your early to mid-20s is foolish.  This mindset proposes to our young people that the real path to happiness is staying single as a young adult while rejecting the sacrificial love of marriage and parenthood. Your 20s are really for careers, cubicle farms, nightclubs and weekend brunches.

Professor Brad Wilcox’s research and writing provide powerful pushback, showing instead that the happiest people in America reject this “wisdom” and pursue the meaningful love of marriage and parenthood.  Now, Harper has given us a powerful anthem championing Wilcox’s case through the clever storytelling of a song written from both the feelings of physical fatigue and life-giving love.

It’s an apologetic America badly needs.

According to the latest American Community Survey, the age of first marriage now stands at 30.  People are not only getting married later, but so many today will never marry.  The Institute for Family Studies estimates that one in three young adults today will never marry by age 45.  This drives shorter life spans and epidemics of loneliness and mental illness.

It robs many women of the deep joys Harper sings about.  This young mom grew up singing bluegrass gospel in small Missouri churches.  Her musical foundation was formed not in performance, but in connection — in the kind of community where people show up for each other.  “It truly does take a village,” she said after her win.  “If it wasn't for the village, it wouldn't have ever happened.”

The village in Harper’s case is the family of families — the small town and the local church.

“String Cheese” isn’t just a song about one mom’s hard season.  It’s a cultural cry for the place that was once commonplace but today only exists in hidden pockets of American life.  This village is the web of relationships, mentorship, and shared faith.  That village has been slowly displaced: by screens, by a rejection of sacrificial love, by the quiet erosion of institutions built to hold it all together.  The local church is the one institution with both the mandate and the relational infrastructure to rebuild it.

And I’m seeing it come back in both small and large ways.

Asked about her plans going forward, she didn't talk about record deals or tour dates first. "Every stage I step on is another ministry opportunity,” she said. “And it will always be like that for me.”

The hunger for what she’s singing about is real.  The longing for the meaning that comes from family, from vocation, from a love that costs something and means everything.

While others have attacked, it’s not going away.  Harper reminds us that God has hardwired us for this sort of love, which we are now seeing on unexpected stages, reaching people who haven’t set foot in a church for years.

The question for every pastor and church leader watching this cultural moment is simple: when young people begin pursuing the meaning that comes from this sacrificial love — the love of married life — will you be ready for it?

This is exactly what the Church was built for.

 

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel