A song with a tender pro-life message has reached the top 5 on iTunes’ chart for country music less than three weeks after its release.
Eighteen-year-old Rachel Holt sings “I Was Gonna Be” from the perspective of an aborted child.
The chorus of the song—“All I wanted was a chance/To learn to love and laugh and dance/But I was gone before I arrived/Sent back to heaven on a starlight flight”—is paired with photos of baby bottles, baby shoes, and toys that hauntingly disappear in the music video.
The song leapfrogged over Zach Bryan’s “Pink Skies” and Luke Combs’ “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma” on iTunes. Songwriter Chris Wallin—who has written hit songs for country music stars Trace Adkins, Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney, and others—said he wrote the song without thinking anyone would ever sing it.
“I started writing this song for myself. I didn’t think anyone would have the courage to sing this,” Wallin told Breitbart News Daily in an interview on Sirius-XM’s Patriot conservative talk-show channel. Soon after they met and Holt heard Wallin’s song, she offered to sing it, he said.
Wallin said he “wanted people to hear the voice of the voiceless,” writing the song because he “thought something had to be said.”
When it came to finding a promotional sponsor for “I Was Gonna Be,” Wallin said that Baste Records, a Nashville, Tennessee-based label that describes itself as a “right-wing counterculture music company,” didn’t “leave one stone unturned when it came to calling up and talking to pro-life groups” to promote the song. When none of the pro-life groups would sponsor the song, the conservative Patriot Mobile wireless phone company stepped up, Wallin told Breitbart.
Patriot Mobile CEO Glenn Story said in a news release that his company received a call about a pro-life song needing a promotional sponsor.
“It aligned perfectly with our beliefs about the sanctity of life,” said Story, whose company calls itself the “official song partner” of the record.
He also noted the song’s beauty, saying, “We need more conservative messaging in the arts as the music industry is a very important part of today’s culture war.”
Wallin, who doubles as the head of artists and repertoire for Baste Records, signed Holt to the Nashville label last year after discovering the Indiana native and her self-released debut album “Missin’ Home.”
“I Was Gonna Be” was released to streaming platforms, including Spotify and iHeartRadio, on June 21, just three days before the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The song continues to have a five-star rating in the iTunes Store. Baste Records posted on X last week that “I Was Gonna Be” reached No. 9 for Billboard’s “country digital sales,” No. 20 for “digital sales,” and No. 21 for “emerging artists.”