[MUSIC] Skunk Anansie, "Selling Jesus"
Jun. 23rd, 2008 10:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI only ever heard British rock band Skunk Anansie's 1995 song "Selling Jesus" because I happened to buy the movie Strange Days's enjoyable soundtrack album. Notable career though the band might have had, I'm still into it only for this song.
As you may have gathered by watching the video and actually listening to the music, it's a bit of an angry song, what with lyrics like "You go to church and light a candle/And then you're blinded by the light from the golden pews." When I first heard the song, I took it to be a straightforward anti-religious song. Not true; I'm not even sure that the liner notes actually included the lyrics. If they had, I would have discovered that the lyrics meant something else.
This song has the ancient tension between a religious establishment seen as corrupt and out of touch and the possibility of more pure individual experiences unmediated by this fallen institution, all doubtless knotted togeher in a thick dialogical web (is this the third time I've said something like this? must be because it's a valid descriptor). This does lead to the dead-end pap of "All things are pure to the pure", not especially likely to relate to the Anabaptist millennarianism of the 16th century that at least had the virtues of being interesting.
As you may have gathered by watching the video and actually listening to the music, it's a bit of an angry song, what with lyrics like "You go to church and light a candle/And then you're blinded by the light from the golden pews." When I first heard the song, I took it to be a straightforward anti-religious song. Not true; I'm not even sure that the liner notes actually included the lyrics. If they had, I would have discovered that the lyrics meant something else.
You're buying this you're buying that now
You're wishing all the money in the world belonged to you
You're crucified upon your own cross now
You're givin' money to the white men in the white limo
That kind of god is always man-made
They made him up then wrote a book to keep you on your kness
They get their theories from the same place
Then build a church if there's some money left
From lying on the beach
This song has the ancient tension between a religious establishment seen as corrupt and out of touch and the possibility of more pure individual experiences unmediated by this fallen institution, all doubtless knotted togeher in a thick dialogical web (is this the third time I've said something like this? must be because it's a valid descriptor). This does lead to the dead-end pap of "All things are pure to the pure", not especially likely to relate to the Anabaptist millennarianism of the 16th century that at least had the virtues of being interesting.
