Newsboys have shared an update six weeks after longtime frontman Michael Tait abruptly left the band, revealing God has “continually shown His faithfulness” to the group despite the recent shake-up.
“The last six weeks have been quite a journey, but through it all, God has continually shown His faithfulness to us. We are excited about our future, just the four of us,” the group wrote in a Tuesday social media post.
“We also have been working on new music this month, and we can’t wait to start sharing it with you! Our first release of 2025 is a new version of How Many Times, which was the first song Adam wrote when he joined the band. Newly titled How Many Times (oh how You love me), this version feels like the right song to share first as we enter this new season. It releases everywhere you listen to music on March 14th. Thank you for the love and support, it has meant the world to us!”
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The update, signed by members Adam Agee, Jody Davis, Jeff Frankenstein and Duncan Phillips, marks one of the first since Tait, who led the band for 15 years following Peter Furler’s departure in 2009, announced his decision to step away in January.
“While this may come as a surprise given I’ve been touring ever since college, I’ve made for me what is a monumental and heartfelt decision that it is time to step down from Newsboys,” Tait wrote. “This decision does not come lightly and has been a shock to even myself, but amidst prayer and fasting, I have clarity that this is the right decision.”
The departure, which came just weeks before the launch of their Worldwide Revival Nights tour, left Newsboys scrambling to adapt, ultimately turning to Agee, the band’s guitarist who joined the group in 2023, to step into the lead singer role.
Agee revealed in a later interview that the group re-recorded “How Many Times” featuring his vocals instead of Tait’s.
“That was one of the things that we’ve been scrambling to try to figure out and get done,” Agee explained. “That’s actually a song that was one of the first songs I wrote for this Newsboys project a couple of years ago, and finally, it’s getting released. But I had sung a bunch of background vocals and everything on there, but I hadn’t done the lead vocals. So we popped back into the studio and got that done real quick.”
Agee, formerly of Stellar Kart and Audio Adrenaline, becomes the fourth lead singer in Newsboys history. At a January show following Tait’s departure, Agee told the crowd, “We’ve been through a lot this week.”
“When the news hit us a week ago,” he said, “it brings up a lot of questions like: ‘What do we do? Do we move forward?’ Those thoughts come into your head, man. Should we hang it up? Or do we keep going?”
“I want to tell you guys something that with this band, with Newsboys, sometimes the messenger might change, but the message remains the same.”
Prior to his stint as the lead singer of Newsboys, Tait was part of the CCM rap-rock group DC Talk, from 1988-2001, alongside TobyMac and Kevin Smith (Max). Before joining Newsboys, Tait also led his own band, Tait.
In a 2023 interview with The Christian Post, Newsboys keyboardist Jeff Frankenstein said he believed the Christian music band’s longevity was due to their commitment to biblical truth.
“I think our longevity is a testament to our hearts and where we are as people, because it’s very uncommon in any genre that a band would stay together for over 30 years,” Frankenstein said.
“I think that one of the cool things about Christian music, as opposed to pop music, is that we all know deep down that music affects people and has a purpose and God gave us that gift. In a pop music situation where everything’s about you and your career, you can see why those things flame out so quickly, because they’re just based around either people’s egos or just selfishness. In this situation, we all have a common purpose where we know that music can really change people, because we’ve seen it happen.”
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com
