(no subject)

[zinze]

 I was just thinking about how people like to get offended by religious metaphors/references in secular pop music so here's a playlist. Literally just what I came up with in the shower and while typing this, so not complete or deep.

Ariana Grande, "God Is A Woman"
King Princess, "Holy" -- probably no one's getting offended by this unless they're already offended by queerness and genderqueerness but it felt related
Lady Gaga, "Alejandro" and "Judas"
The Beatles, "The Ballad of John & Yoko"
Madonna, "Like A Prayer" -- Obviously the Beatles predate this and I don't think King Princess is necessarily going for Madonna, but like... Lady Gaga definitely is and Ariana Grande casts her as Samuel L Jackson so...

Comments

[kihou]

Judas by Antje Duvekot comes to mind.

I'll Bet He Was Cool by Savage Garden, I guess?

What If God Was One Of Us

Hallelujiah

[zinze]

I miss your counter-playlists!

Yeah, I thought of the Antje Duvekot but I guess I had some kind of nebulous vision that was about the controversy and I feel like Antje is both not on a radar to be controversial and not going for shock value? I don't really know.

I don't know if it's a fact, but I feel like "What If God Was One of Us" is more embraced by the Christian community, and it's actually kind of a religious song. "Hallelujah" I wasn't sure about the beginning, but it's so massively accepted now that it's hard for me to imagine it was too controversial in the beginning?

"Holy" is I guess the exception to the controversy thread, but I think I felt like it fits because it associates the concept of holiness with sex in a poppy non-religious way that, if straight conservatives listened to King Princess, they might be upset by.

tldr I scrolled briefly through the comments on "God is a Woman," and while a lot of people are offended in a stupid patriarchal-god way that shows no understanding of the song, if they actually listened to the song they'd probably still be offended by God coming up at all in a song that seems to really just be about embracing (straight) female sexuality.

[kihou]

Hallelujah has the interesting thing that people vary the lyrics. One is that "Maybe there's a God above" gets replaced with "I know that there's a God above", which is interesting and arguably point-missing change. It reminds me as when people treat counter-culture songs that mention America as if they were patriotic.

[zinze]

Totally. I think "Hallelujah" might be one that gets viewed as more religious than it is when people don't really know what it means. Sort of like how "Imagine" gets treated, maybe? People just ignore the edges they don't like, I guess? Although I don't know if people change the lyrics to "Imagine" in the same way, but I wouldn't be surprised.

[kihou]

Yeah, Imagine's totally the same way. I feel like sometimes people excerpt Imagine to avoid lyrics they don't like, though since most of the song is controversial lyrics that means you can't use very much?