Ghost released their Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic 7" in September 2019, which featured "Mary On A Cross" and "Kiss The Go-Goat." The 7" was exhumed from Ghost's "1969 archives" and were two songs recorded by Papa Nihil's band prior to Ghost, according to the lore.
Then all of a sudden this summer for no real reason, "Mary On A Cross" blew up on TikTok. "Mary On A Cross" is now Ghost's most popular track on Spotify with just over 186 million streams, which the band wisely cashed in on by releasing a slowed and reverbed version of it as well (alongside a small 'greatest hits'-type EP).
So what was the genus marking behind all this? Nothing. Ghost mastermind Tobias Forge tells Metal Hammer he didn't even know the song was popular until his daughter told him. "I think it was my daughter who spotted it first. She said, 'I heard Mary On A Cross on TikTok.' She's done that before with other songs. Then I was summoned to a label meeting and they were like, 'Are you aware of what's going on?', and they started presenting stats."
Forge also notes that the whole thing was never planned (as most other viral moments generally aren't), but he's glad that people are digging into Ghost after discovering the song. "We attracted so many new people who got sucked into this and fell into the rabbit hole of everything that we created. And that's a great thing because you always need more people."
