Atheists without songs?
By Psyche | November 10, 2010 | Print This Post | E-mail This Post | 10 Comments
9firefly9: “Steve Martin: Atheists Don’t Have No Songs”
“From Austin City Limits (2010) Steve Martin & the Steep Canyon Rangers perform his original a capella “gospel” tune for the non-believers among us.”
This has been floating around the past few days, and I’m not sure that it’s accurate.
John Lennon’s “Imagine” and XTC’s “Dear God” spring immediately to mind, and I’m sure there must be a host of others.
What are your thoughts on this?
Psyche is the editor of ahrfoundation.org and the curator for the occult resource SpiralNature.com, Psyche also operates a tarot consultation business, Psyche Tarot. She has been published in The Cauldron, Konton, Tarot World Magazine, among other magazines, and her essay “Strategic Magick” appeared in Manifesting Prosperity (Megalithica, 2008).
Psyche's website is http://www.ahrfoundation.org.
Hah.
Wouldn’t atheist songs just be…secular songs?
I don’t think so. Much as I’m fond of “Rubber Duckie“, I wouldn’t call it an atheist song.
I feel songs which actively challenge the existence or validity of god(s) have their own place, quite different from generic secular songs.
In that case, AFI’s God Called In Sick Today would qualify. And Morrissey’s I Have Forgiven Jesus. And Flogging Molly’s Us Of Lesser Gods. And possibly MCR’s Destroya.
I tried signing up, but none of those links seemed to work for me. When I tried to play the song it said “Unavailable”?
Still, those are good bands, and they sound appropriate.
We’re continuing to prove Steve Martin wrong.
Dang! Well, you should be able to hear them on my channel if you like.
But yeah, there’s an obvious history of music in the modern West that challenges the dominant culture, and the dominant religion is usually a part of that – hell, that’s 80% of Marilyn Manson’s catalogue. Maybe 60% of heavy metal as a genre. (How could I have forgotten A Perfect Circle’s “Halo?” A very passionate song.)
Could be because I’m Canadian. Pandora stopped working several years ago due to concerns about international copyright.
I love A Perfect Circle! A lot of NIN would qualify, too.
I think “All This Time”, from Sting’s album “Soul Cages”, can be considered an atheist song:
(…)
Two priests came round our house tonight
One young, one old, to offer prayers for the dying
To serve the final rite
One to learn, one to teach
Which way the cold wind blows
Fussing and flapping in priestly black
Like a murder of crows
(…)
Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth
Better to be poor than a fat man in the eye of a needle
And as these words were spoken I swore I hear
The old man laughing
‘What good is a used up world and how could it be
Worth having’
And all this time the river flowed
Endlessly like a silent tear
And all this time the river flowed
Father, if Jesus exists,
Then how come he never lived here
The teachers told us, the Romans built this place
They built a wall and a temple, an edge of the empire
Garrison town,
They lived and they died, they prayed to their gods
But the stone gods did not make a sound
And their empire crumbled, ’til all that was left
Were the stones the workmen found…
I had to YouTube it. (Worth it: the video takes place on a boat and Sting sings into a wrench. It’s hilarious.)
Good choice.
Yep, It’s very funny. I think the clip is a reference to a Marx Brothers movie. :-)