Christian Leave

First gaining popularity on social media as a teen 2015, Christian Leave (originally known as Christian Akridge) moved on from covers to original songs by 2016, including the acoustic love song "Please Notice," which became a viral hit. His debut EP, 2016's Hope, landed in the Top Ten of Billboard's Independent Albums chart. A full-length debut, Heartbreak Room, arrived two years later. The multi-instrumentalist expanded his sound with the more rock-minded Heavy Hitting Hurts My Head EP in 2021 while shifting his lyrical focus to the anxiety and depression that accompanied his rise to fame. The son of a pastor, Christian Akridge was raised in Wichita Falls, Texas, where he grew up in the church. His exposure to popular music was limited by his parents when he was young, though he got his first album, Stevie Wonder's In Square Circle, at the age of 13. Already inspired by Wonder's soulful R&B and Southern gospel music, he soon discovered wide-ranging influences on the Internet and was inspired to take up the guitar. When he heard that his church needed a bass player, he started playing bass and, later, piano. In 2015, when Akridge was 14, he began sharing comedic videos as well as his cover versions of artists ranging from Elvis Presley to Cage the Elephant and Frank Ocean. He had over 100,000 followers within a few months and accepted an invitation to join the PressPlay tour, a showcase for young social media personalities. Still using his birth name, Akridge released a debut EP in 2016 consisting of original songs, mostly on the topic of young love. It debuted at number seven on both the Independent Albums and Heatseekers Albums charts as the track "Please Notice" racked up tens of millions of streams. He eventually followed it with his self-released full-length debut, early 2018's Heartbreak Room. Later in 2018, he put out another EP, called Trilogy. His debut for Godmode/Warner, it was also his first release to adopt the alias Christian Leave. Around the time he left his hometown for Los Angeles, Leave introduced a more anxious, rock-oriented sound on the 2019 single "Milksop/Darling." It carried over onto his early-2021 EP, the self-produced Heavy Hitting Hurts My Head, also issued on Godmode. ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi