Ghost’s “Mary on a Cross” has surpassed one billion streams on Spotify, becoming the first song in the Swedish band’s catalog to reach that milestone. Its route there stretches from an elaborate piece of fictional band history to a TikTok resurgence that caught even Tobias Forge by surprise.
The song first appeared digitally on September 13, 2019, alongside “Kiss the Go-Goat” on Seven Inches of Satanic Panic. Ghost presented the release as music from their imaginary 1969 incarnation, fronted by Papa Nihil. The songs were new, but their presentation invited fans into an earlier chapter of the band’s invented history, complete with a younger version of its elderly patriarch.
In 2022, “Mary on a Cross” found another audience through a very different kind of storytelling. A slowed version soundtracked a TikTok fan edit using scenes from Stranger Things, and the song spread across the platform in both its original and altered forms. Ghost subsequently released an official slowed version, responding to an audience that had discovered the track nearly three years after its original release.
Forge learned about that growth through his daughter. Speaking to Metal Hammer in November 2022, he recalled her mentioning that she had heard the song on TikTok. A meeting with the label followed, where the scale of its renewed popularity became clearer. He was cautious about what the numbers meant, explaining that a stream did not necessarily make someone a fan. The campaign itself had taken the band and label by surprise.
“That was never something that we planned,” Forge told the magazine.
The resurgence carried into the singles charts. “Mary on a Cross” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 90 on the chart dated September 24, 2022, giving Ghost their first appearance there. In Britain, it reached No. 28 on the Official Singles Chart.
Forge also saw an opportunity beyond the success of one recording. In a subsequent Metal Hammer interview published in January 2023, he discussed how listeners arriving through “Mary on a Cross” could explore the five studio albums and other releases Ghost had already made. The song had become an introduction to a much larger body of work, with years of music and storytelling waiting for anyone who wanted to follow it further.
Ghost revisited that storytelling in the official animated “Mary on a Cross” video. Released publicly on July 25, 2024, it was taken directly from the band’s feature film Rite Here Rite Now, with its YouTube premiere arriving the day before the film’s soundtrack.
