Trinidad and Tobago-born gospel singer Sherwin Gardner is celebrating 40 years in gospel this year, beginning in Arima at the age of five. He’s also celebrating being the first black gospel artist to achieve the landmark of one billion views of a single recording, his viral single "Find Me Here (Blessings Find Me)".
An article in CBN News: The Christian Perspective said the song began as an affirmation at the end of 2023, which Gardner sent, along with the melody, to a Kenyan music arranger, later uploading the recorded version to Instagram and TikTok.
The song quickly became popular and his follower count skyrocketed.
Gardner re-recorded the song on New Year’s Day and asked his production company Tyscot Records to release it. Since then, it has been shared by American Grammy Award-winning producer Teddy Riley, R&B singer Alicia Keys, rapper Eve Jeffers, Destiny’s Child’s Michelle Williams, gospel artist Yolanda Adams, and comedian-turned-pastor Kel Mitchell, according to the article.
Speaking to Newsday via WhatsApp, Gardner, who is the worship leader at Bahamas Harvest Church in Nassau, said the song was distributed by ADA Warner, the independent distribution and label services arm of Warner Music Group.
“In their system, they’re able to reach out to platforms like TikTok, Instagram, etc, and all the streaming platforms so they get all the numbers from them. For example on my page you may see ten million views but there are some people across the world who took the song, shared it, and on their page they have 20 million views, 30 million views, 100 million views, so the system calculates all those views, even the ones I can’t see from countries that are blocked, and then they would be able to give the labels all the information.”
He said the song was released on January 10 and was at 1.7 billion views as of March 27. It was being seen worldwide.
“The biggest market is Brazil, which just passed the US for the highest numbers, views, and shares and are dominating on TikTok and Instagram as well.
After that it’s the US, South Africa, the African continent on a whole, there’s a lot of numbers coming in from there; and the Caribbean.
A lot of celebrities have shared it who have major numbers on their platform and now those are the cause for the song growing and growing.”
Gardner comes from a family of evangelists, as his mother, the Rev Merle Gardner, is a pastor, his uncle, Kennedy Patterson, is a gospel artist, and his grandfather, Ivan Patterson, was a bishop in the New Testament church.
He began singing in churches at just five, and his debut album, "Power in the Name," was released when he was 17. He said his journey has been a great one.
“I’ve had success before on the Billboard charts and things like that. I’m signed to Tyscot Records, who is tied to ADA Warner. I’ve never stopped, I’ve always been doing gospel, always been doing music. The only thing is I’ve been more focused on church for the last couple years, but I’ve brought out music and had songs that are still doing very we
