B.J. Thomas’ cross-genre career

With the passing of B.J. Thomas, one of the strangest celebrity-Christian sagas drew to a close.

Thomas, 78, succumbed to lung cancer in May, two months after announcing his condition on social media. Optimistically, his website still teased the forthcoming announcement of 2021 tour dates.

From his cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” in 1966 to his cover of the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby” in 1977, Thomas placed 14 singles on the Billboard Top 40, with “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” and “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” hitting No 1. The latter also topped the country charts, foreshadowing his ’80s string of country chart-toppers.

Between his pop and country periods—in retrospect, musical distinctions without a difference—his tender, melismatic tenor also became a fixture on Christian radio with songs taken from his gospel albums. He made those following a dramatic born-again experience that he detailed in a Jerry B. Jenkins co-authored autobiography named after his inaugural Christian hit, “Home Where I Belong.”

In a bizarre turn of events, his gospel run came to a halt. At a 1982 show in Norman, Okla., during which he was co-billed with Andraé Crouch, he stalked off the stage after blowing up at a woman whose loud, ’tween-song testifying for Jesus he took as a rebuke to his continuing to perform secular tunes. News of the incident rapidly spread, Thomas himself fanned the flames, and seemingly overnight his days as a CCM star ended.

Anyone familiar with the history of onstage meltdowns knows that such incidents are usually the culmination of long-simmering conflicts. Thomas’ was no exception.

“It put a religious thing on me,” he told the Houston Chronicle in 2010, speaking of his Christian music, “and that religious thing separates people. I was never able to rebuild my mainstream career after that.” Translation: The more he sang about Jesus, the more his pop opportunities dwindled, and the more his pop opportunities dwindled, the more he blamed his Christian audience for demanding only songs about Jesus.

Thomas would go on to send mixed signals about his beliefs. He made live and studio rerecordings of his most popular gospel material and wrote the liner notes to his CCM compilation Our ­ReCollections. But he also pooh-poohed his faith to Howard Stern by telling the shock jock that if he’d been born in India, he’d probably be a Hindu. And in 2019 he snapped at a Twitter follower who’d criticized his support for “gay pride” by Tweeting, “I am not a part of any religion. I believe we are all One.”

Yet, in the February 2020 performances that would prove to be his last, he was still singing “Home Where I Belong.”

“If I like [a] song,” he told an interviewer last year, “and I find a way I can really believe it, that’s all I need.”