Backstage stories from Christian music lives.
What Else? with Corey Mann is a relaxed interview show built around Christian music artists, old songs, road stories, and faith-shaped turning points. It favors easy banter over polish, letting guests move from chicken nuggets and pizza-slice texts into albums, sobriety, grief, touring, and music with a mission.
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What Else? with Corey Mann is built like a long backstage conversation in the Christian music world. It has the rhythm of people who have met at shows, remembered old albums, and still want to know what the last hard season cost. Corey Mann keeps the tone casual and quick. He can open with sushi, a pizza emoji, a shirt choice, a Beatles biography, or a cracked tooth from a chicken McNugget, then slide straight into record-making, touring, faith, and the moment someone wondered whether they had what it takes. The show’s strongest episodes make room for both the industry map and the private story. Terrian talks about joining Diversity and signing with Goatee Records in the same season. Mac Powell looks back at Third Day’s farewell-tour momentum, arena nerves, the Ryman, and what bandmates have been doing since. Steven Curtis Chapman reflects on revisiting older recordings with respect for the original arrangements and the musicians who gave them life. Ben Fuller’s conversation moves through addiction, loss, Nashville, sobriety, ministry, and a song moment connected to Carrie. Mary Claire’s episode turns a first album into a conversation about tears, encouragement, old CDs, and the strange grace of imperfect packaging. The show is not trying to sound like a label campaign. It is warmer and more specific than that. Corey Mann tends to ask concrete questions: favorite songs, first impressions, who said the encouraging thing, what the room felt like, what changed after the offer came. Those prompts let guests tell longer stories without losing the listener. The humor helps. A throwaway line about a live studio audience being one woman named Lydia or horses in a dog race keeps the show from becoming too polished. Faith is present throughout, but it usually arrives through testimony, gratitude, ministry, grief, or the quiet conviction that music can carry people through a hard stretch. Listeners who grew up around Christian radio, church stages, mission-trip CDs, Christian music records, and arena tours will hear plenty of familiar names. Newer listeners get a human entry point into the artists behind the songs. The show works because it remembers that Christian music is also a community of meals, labels, old friendships, family stories, nervous rehearsals, and people still figuring out how to keep going.
Made for: For Christian music listeners who want artist interviews with warmth, humor, faith, and behind-the-scenes specificity. It especially suits fans who care about Christian music history, touring stories, and personal testimony.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart by keeping the conversation ordinary enough to feel real: food jokes, old CDs, text messages, arena logistics, and sincere faith all share the same table. Corey Mann’s questions are specific, familiar, and patient enough to let artists tell the longer story.
Corey Mann embraces the long-form conversation, and within the chats with Christian music artists, (and some other folks too), hopefully you are inspired, encouraged, challenged, entertained, and buoyant. (I looked up a new word!) Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/what-else-with-corey-mann--5802358/support.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Corey Mann draws practical career detail from Christian music artists while keeping faith, performance, and record-making in the same conversation.
Corey Mann treats an artist interview as a career map, following songs back through the decisions, relationships, doubts, and stage experience behind them.
Corey Mann gets you the career crossroads, studio choices, and faith behind the Christian-music credits.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Mary Claire and Corey Mann talk through a hard season, a musician's encouragement and the Christian music they remember.
Mary Claire's first album brings Corey Mann to the hard season when she began making it. She says the music helped pull her out of a low place, and Mann asks if she wants to talk about it. Later, she remembers telling a musician she wasn't sure she had what it takes.
Terrian recalls the rehearsal that worried TobyMac's group and the invitation she never thought to ask for.
Terrian tells Corey Mann how a rehearsal with TobyMac's touring group gave the wrong impression. Working through choreography and stage blocking with Gabe, she held back some of the energy she would bring to a show.
Mac Powell revisits Third Day's arena years and upcoming reunion with Corey Mann.
With a 2026 Third Day reunion tour announced, Mac Powell looks back with Corey Mann on the band's farewell run. He remembers booking one night at Nashville's Ryman, then adding two more.
Ben Fuller and Corey Mann talk loss, faith and the moments around the music.
Corey Mann and Ben Fuller talk about Fuller's path from a Vermont farm to Nashville, with loss, sobriety and faith running through the conversation. Fuller recalls watching a documentary about Michael Weaver and wanting to serve people through his own ministry.
Chapman revisits a record 25 years later and hears what his touring band brought to the studio.
Steven Curtis Chapman returns to a record 25 years later, listening for what he hears differently now. He talks through the songs and arrangements with an ear for the originals, hoping to preserve what made those recordings special. The record still sounds incredible to him.
Gospel talk with church-room voltage.
Warm banter, guest stories, faith close by.
Christian radio ministry, reported from the inside.
The song is the excuse; the tangents are the point.
Early Jesus music, pulled from the shelf and prayed over.
Corey Mann interviews Christian music artist Stephen McWhirter about his life, work, and faith.
Corey Mann introduces and interviews Christian music artist Rachel Purcell, discussing her background in country music and marimba playing.
Corey Mann interviews Christian music artist Matthew West, discussing a humorous tooth-breaking incident and personal stories.
This episode features advertisements promoting travel to Northern Michigan and AutoCamp outdoor accommodations.
Host Corey Mann interviews Mary Claire, a 22-year-old CCM singer-songwriter from a Nashville music industry family, on the release of her debut album 'Enough.' Mary Claire wrote most of the album across Los Angeles, New York, and Florida the summer after her parents divorced, describing the writing process as her lifeline through a low period.
Host Corey Mann interviews Christian recording artist Terrian, a former member of Toby Mac's Diverse City band, about her path from Memphis gospel churches to CCM stardom.
Host Corey Mann interviews Mac Powell, the Grammy-winning lead singer of Third Day, on his 36th appearance on the show, with the central news being the announcement of a Third Day reunion arena tour for spring 2026 to mark 30 years since their debut album.
Host Corey Mann interviews Ben Fuller, a Vermont-raised CCM artist releasing his second album, which features a duet with Carrie Underwood on the song 'If It Was Up To Me.' Fuller traces how the collaboration began with meeting comedian Bud in Paducah, Kentucky, discovering Bud's brother was Carrie Underwood's husband Mike Fisher, and a year of breakfast fellowship before learning over a bowl of cucumbers at their house that Carrie was open to singing with him.
Host Corey Mann interviews Christian music artist Steven Curtis Chapman to mark the 25th anniversary of his 1999 album Speechless, which produced seven radio singles that reached number one, including 'Dive,' 'Fingerprints of God,' and 'Would Be Still.' Chapman is preparing a 12-city anniversary tour featuring the full album with live strings, having recorded the album's orchestrations at Abbey Road Studios.