Popular music covers just about any topic under, over, around, and even beyond the sun. I find it awe-inspiring that musical artists can come up with songs tackling almost anything you can think of. Of course, the most covered topic is, well, l-o-v-e. Good love, bad love, straight love, gay love, eternal love, 15-minute love. It gets pretty sickening after a while, really. I wish more artists would cover more off-the-wall topics, stuff that you don't normally hear being sung about. Like God, for instance.
Well, I know God gets sung about all the time in churches, in religious gatherings, in a lot of other places and situations. But when you use the idea of God in popular music, somehow it come across as sacrilege even though it wasn't meant to be. Now I'm not encouraging people to knock God. I just find it intruiging, in a philosophical way, when God becomes the center of a secular song.
Anyway, just the other day this old song suddenly pops into my head and plays in a loop for half a day. It's an quirky and dark old dirge called "Blasphemous Rumours" by 80's synth-pop icons Depeche Mode. Basically, it tinkers with one of the most irritating ironies I know in life: when you have no desire for something (like your own life), you get it by the truckload; but, when you want something real bad (like wanting to live to be 100), you're always left holding an empty bag.
"Blasphemous Rumours" is sort of a rant against the seeming unfairness of a god with a terrifying sense of sick cosmic humor. It tells of a sad and bored young girl who tries to commit suicide but somehow survives. After a few years, she matures and finds peace and Jesus, and decides that life is beautiful after all. This is when she gets hit by a car and eventually dies. What a total bummer.
Check out the lyrics:
Blasphemous Rumours - Depeche Mode
Girl of sixteen, whole life ahead of her
Slashed her wrists, bored with life
Didn't succeed
Thank the Lord for small mercies
Fighting back the tears, mother reads the note again
Sixteen candles burn in her mind
She takes the blame, it's always the same
She goes down on her knees and prays
I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours
But I think that God's got a sick sense of humor
And when I die, I expect to find him laughing
Girl of eighteen, fell in love with everything
Found new life in Jesus Christ
Hit by a car
Ended up on a life support machine
Summer's day as she passed away
Birds were singing in the summer sky
Then came the rain
And once again a tear fell from her mother's eye
I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours
But I think that God's got a sick sense of humor
And when I die, I expect to find him laughing
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