We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.
But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir our hearts profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch, body with body, the dread essence beyond logic. - Nikos Kazantzakis
Jimmy Cliff, “Son Man”
An early-eighties reggae anthem of Rastafarian positivity from one of Jimmy Cliff’s best albums, the now hard-to-find Give The People What They Want.
The Rolling Stones, “The Sweet Sound of Heaven”
“You can’t have light without a little shadow.” From the recently released Stones album Hackney Diamonds, this is most explicitly theistic song ever penned by The Glimmer Twins. Lyrics aside, it could have come right out of their seventies-era heyday…it even has Stevie Wonder on it! Of course, it’s totally over the top (with help from a caterwauling Lady Gaga), but that’s what the Stones do best.
“Let the old still believe that they’re young.” Keep prayin’, Mick!
Roger Waters, “Deja Vu”
“The temple's in ruins / The bankers get fat / The buffalo's gone and the mountain top's flat.” In this caustic 2017 ballad about human mortality and the arc of civilization, the former Pink Floyd songwriter imagines doing things better if he had God’s job. Good luck with that.
Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir
Gospel at its best. A song that is as much about persistence as it is about faith.
Etta James, “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind”)
“Man means nothing, he means less to me / Than the lowliest cactus flower or the humblest yucca tree.” The legendary blues singer’s cover of a Randy Newman song imagined from the POV of a dysfunctional deity.
Weather Theater, Great God’s Gift
“I can’t look at this mess and testify it’s great God’s gift.” A brief for disbelief from an obscure eighties band.
Tori Amos, “Crucify”
“I've been raising up my hands, drive another nail in / Just what God needs, one more victim.” The singer-songwriter references her guilt-driven Catholic upbringing in the lead song from her superb 1992 debut album, Little Earthquakes. “The more that I studied mythology and archetypes, and different perspectives, I started to find Jesus outside the Church, not in the Church anymore. That was just my experience, I found a lot of hypocrisy in the Church. I'm not saying everybody has that experience,” she said in a 2022 interview.
John Lennon, “God”
After The Beatles’ breakup, Lennon and his wife Yoko took up “primal scream therapy” with psychiatrist Arthur Janov. Not surprisingly, there was a lot of emotional unburdening on his first solo album, John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band. Although the singer was not a committed atheist - listen to the words at the end of the video - “God” is John’s 1970 manifesto of what he didn’t believe in.
Sure, the tune flirts with artistic self-indulgence, if not self parody. Yet this music video, made decades later, takes it to another place with the footage of grieving fans surrounding the Dakota in the wake of Lennon’s 1980 assassination. “The dream is over” indeed.
The Church, “The Awful Ache”
“Her love is lost, like the man on the cross /She says no more, the awful ache.” A great ballad about a grieving Catholic woman by the eighties Aussie shoegazer band, The Church.
Paul Hyde, No Gods, Just Men
From The Big Book of Sad Songs, Vol. 1, in 2002. The Vancouverite and ex-Payolas front man has come up with some great solo material over the years, which deserves far better exposure. I suspect two things finished off The Payolas. The first being the unholy studio influence of a certain Canadian producer, who was always ready to ladle sticky MOR syrup over any rock n’ roll track. The second was the band’s name itself. The payola scandal of the fifties, involving bribery flowing between music labels and radio stations in the fifties, apparently wasn’t just a thing of the past by the eighties.
Meghan Trainor, “I Love Me”
“They'll try to play me like a game / I bet they're too scared of the fame / But I can see it clearer when I'm lookin' in the mirror / Saying God made me just right.”
Seriously?
“I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast / I love all y'all, but I love me the most.” I’m not sure if this song is meant as an ironic slapdown of socially-sanctioned narcissism or a straight-up endorsement. Suspect the latter. I only include it because it fits in so nicely with today’s reigning religion of self esteem solipsism.
In any case, the dancing is pretty good.
Michelle Shocked, “Yes, God is Real”
The heavily cancelled singer Michelle Shocked does justice to Mahalia Jackson’s thunderous claim of faith. No appeal to dusty scripture for Jackson’s guitar-wielding interpreter..this God is a felt reality. Schocked even made this agnostic briefly feel it too. Not bad for a skinny white girl from Texas.
BONUS VIDEO
At times people venture outside what Alan Watts called the “skin-encapulated ego” to feel - rather than exclusively think - of something greater than themselves, their religious texts, their flag or their nation. In such moments, those who’ve mastered their craft can come up with great feats of discovery, invention, justice or art. I don’t know if Faure’s Requiem came from that place…but it feels like it to me.
As they say in the auto ads, “your mileage may vary.”
Thanks, Darren, wonderful quote! Alas, I couldn’t reference it to any reliable source.
https://mythdetector.ge/en/did-tesla-really-criticise-einstein-s-theory-of-relativity-in-an-interview/#:~:text=He%20states%20that%20black%20holes,sounds%20are%20a%20message%20to
Nikola Tesla:
"...Numbers and singularities are signs that mark the music of the spheres. If Einstein had heard her sounds, he would not have created a theory of relativity. These sounds are a message to the mind that life has meaning, that there is perfect harmony in the universe, and that beauty is the cause and effect of Creation. That music is the eternal orbit of the starry heavens. The smallest star is a completed composition and at the same time, part of a celestial symphony. The beating of the human heart is part of that symphony on Earth. Newton learned that the secret lies in the geometrically correct arrangement and movement of celestial bodies. He realized that harmony is the supreme law in the universe. curved space is chaos; chaos is not music. Einstein is the herald of a time of noise and rage..."
https://orthochristiantools.com/interview-with-nikola-tesla-from-1899-i-speak-with-thunder-and-lightning-in-serbian/