04.08.2007
JESUS WALKS: 10 SONGS ABOUT GOD
JESUS WALKS AND GOD SHUFFLES HIS FEET: HERE ARE TEN SONGS ABOUT FAITH AND/OR THE LORD ABOVE226128"CONSIDER IT OUR SPECIAL HOLY WEEK MIX
by Luis Katigbak
So it’s Holy Week, and you’ve already heard Mass and visited a bunch of churches and now you’re at home, trying not to think of the food in the fridge, because you have half a day to go before your fast is over. What to do? Well, you could, you know, pray. Or you could trawl your hard drive for stuff to listen to. And since you might feel just a little guilty cranking up Slayer or Snoop Dogg during this season, you could try and see how many God-oriented songs are already in your collection, not counting stuff by acts that are mostly famous for being Christian and not much else, and not counting stuff that out-and-out sucks (see: MC Hammer’s “Pray.”)
Here’s my list. Of course, no list of this sort can be expected to be so all-inclusive as to run the gamut from Barbie Almalbis to Van Morrison; the list is informed by my own personal tastes. I tried not to include songs that mention God but really have nothing to do with God or faith (like, say, “God Gave Rock n’ Roll to You” by Kiss, or even “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys), and tried not to exclude songs that question God, since those usually come from either a deep-rooted but bruised belief, or at the very least some genuine, needed-to-be-expressed frustration:
10.
Joan Osborne > “One Of Us”—Yes, it’s an obvious choice; that’s why it’s here, and that’s why it’s at number 10—because it’s an obvious choice. Ask anyone in their twenties or thirties to name a song about God and this is likely to be the one that pops up. The notion behind it—that God could be hiding behind any one of us (“Just a slob, like one of us”), and be just as lost and lonely—was intriguing enough to attract listeners, yet not so challenging as to be controversial. It’s just too bad that Osborne, a pretty good singer, never got as much recognition for anything else she did as for this hit. On the upside, it’s probably still reeling in the royalties.
09.
Manic Street Preachers > “There by the Grace of God”—Usually, new tracks thrown in on a band’s Best-Of collection are there to entice die-hard fans who already have all the old material. As such, they tend not to deviate too far from the band’s familiar sound. This song counts as an exception: it veered away from the straightforward stadium-friendly (yet still politically-oriented) rock that the Manics had become known for since the
Everything Must Go album, and provided a glimpse of what was to come (namely, the criminally-overlooked
Lifeblood album). It can also be said to be uncharacteristically optimistic, for the Manics. (“And all the drugs in the world/ Can’t save us from ourselves… With grace we will suffer/ With grace we shall recover/ There by the grace of God.”)
08.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds > “Into Your Arms”—Nick Cave said in a 1999 lecture in Vienna that the “actualising of God through the medium of the love song remains my prime motivation as an artist.” (And you thought he was just your garden variety death-obsessed drug addict.) When a love song begins with the line “I don’t believe in an interventionist God,” you can pretty much figure that puppies-and-lollipops imagery is not in the offing. This is a powerful, moving work, though, about love, faith, and devotion.
07.
Crash Test Dummies > “God Shuffled His Feet”—The Crash Test Dummies are best known for that song with all the humming, and that’s a shame, as they wrote many, many better songs. Case in point: the title track of the same album that “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” came from,
God Shuffled His Feet. Though the tone is light, the music fairly upbeat, and the images evoked by the lyrics fairly comic, it still tackles subjects like our need to know what awaits us beyond this life, and the intractable mysteries we may not be ready to understand.
06.
Depeche Mode > “Blasphemous Rumours”— What? Not “Personal Jesus”? (I have to admit I’m partial to earlier Depeche Mode.) Depeche Mode were no strangers to controversy or the occasional use of religious imagery, and when I first heard this song—as a young boy in a Catholic school—I found the suggestion that God might have “a sick sense of humor” frightening, intriguing, and, well, blasphemous. Perhaps the tragedies it paints are too hackneyed now, but this song did have a unique power when it first came out.
05.
U2 > “Wake Up Dead Man”—Honestly, we could fill this entire list with God-oriented songs by U2. There’s always at least one—and often two or more—“God songs” on each of their albums. I’m partial to this one, though, from the underappreciated album
Pop—one of their darker, more experimental forays. The sense of urgency and near-desperation are palpable (“Jesus, Jesus help me/ I'm alone in this world/ And a fucked up world it is too”). It’s a strange yet fitting note to end an album on, and also one of the very few U2 songs to use profanity.
04.
The Waterboys > “Glastonbury Song”—Mike Scott of The Waterboys is not afraid to be uncool. That explains his use of traditional Irish tunes, his odes to Pan and C.S. Lewis, and his joyous celebration of a sort of mystic Christianity. “I’ve just found God,” this song gleefully declares, “I’ve just found God where he always was.” Scott believes the overtly religious sentiments of the song kept it from rising higher on the charts, and he may be right: it is undoubtedly a very catchy, inspiring number. They didn’t call his work “The Big Music” for nothing.
03.
Kanye West > “Jesus Walks”—Sure, we know
now that Kanye might be a little insane, or at least harbor raving egomaniacal tendencies, especially after that MTV Europe Music Awards debacle. But give credit where it’s due: he got a song that blatantly and repeatedly invokes Jesus on the pop charts. A rap song no less, that is by turns street-smart and spiritual, self-aggrandizing and vulnerable. (“I want to talk to God but I'm afraid because we ain't spoke in so long.”)
02.
XTC > “Dear God”—This song—perhaps the best-known song by one of the greatest bands of the late-20th/ early-21st century—is a failure. “A lot has been written and wrangled over with this song, and, you know, it hasn't deserved it,” said singer/songwriter Andy Partridge. “I just tried to wrestle with the paradox of God and the last dying doubts of belief that had hung, bat-like, in the dark corners of my head since childhood... This song failed to crystallize all my thoughts on the subject in under four minutes. Human belief is too big a beast to bring to the floor in such a short time.” Be that as it may, it’s still a fantastic song, with a memorable melody, and a creepy child-sung intro/outro, and lyrics capable of inducing outrage and guilt and introspection.
01.
Prefab Sprout > “One of the Broken”—A lot of the songs on this list are about God, or addressed to God. This is the only one actually
sung by God. Okay, it was sung by Paddy McAloon, lead singer and songwriter of Prefab Sprout, but it was written in the first person, supposedly from God’s point of view (a first-deity point of view, you might say). The first line is “Hi, this is God here.”—Yes, really. It goes on: “Talking to me used to be a simple affair/ Moses only had to see a burning bush/ And he'd pull up a chair.” It may sound almost like a novelty song so far, but Paddy plays it straight, and when it hits the chorus—“Sing me no deep hymn of devotion/ Sing me no slow sweet melody/ Sing it to one, one of the broken/ And brother you're singing, singing to me”—it wins you over, and you are touched by its simplicity and sincerity. Interestingly enough, it’s not the only God song on the album it comes from (
Jordan: The Comeback, a work of pop genius); there’s also “Michael,” written from the point of view of fallen angel Lucifer, who is asking archangel Michael to relay an apology to the Lord. Great stuff, borne of faith, imagination and talent.
TAGS: God Jesus Holy Week Lent XTC Depeche Mode Joan Osborne Kanye West Crash Dummies Manic
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