The perfect Easter playlist: hidden stories behind Jesus songs

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While you go into the Easter break or stay for these holiest holidays, we have five songs with Jesus theme, which you should choose to hear more carefully … your meanings can surprise you.

Depeche mode – ‘personal Jesus’

“Your personal Jesus / Someone who hears her prayers / Someone who is interested … “

We start with an obvious, but it’s a classic.

In 1989 Depeche Mode published this single from her then album ‘Loss’, which became a fan favorite. At that time, the band’s label placed personal ads in local newspapers with the words “Your personal Jesus” and a telephone number in local newspapers. Anyone who decided to call could hear the new route.

While many look at the song for the commercialization of religion, the boss -songwriter Martin Gore said in a spin interview in 1990 that it was not about. The texts actually refer to Priscilla Presley’s autobiography “Elvis and I”.

“It is a song about being a Jesus for someone else, someone who gives them hope and care,” said Gore. “It’s about how Elvis Presley was her husband and her mentor and how often this happens in love relationships. How the heart of everyone is in any way like a god, and that is not a very balanced view of someone, isn’t it?”

The song is often over the best Depeche mode song lists and has been covered many times, including Johnny Cash in 2022 on his album ‘American IV: The Man Coming around’ and Marilyn Manson in 2008. 2008. Frecher Scamp.

Tom is waiting – ‘chocolate Jesus’

“Well, I don’t go to church on Sunday / don’t get on my knees to pray / not to memorize the Bible’s books / I have my own special way / I know that Jesus loves me / Maybe just a little more / Fall your knees every Sunday / In Zerelda Lees Candy Store “

A personal favorite, this …

For the pagans among them, ‘Chocolate Jesus’ refers to the chocolate sculptures by Richard Manderson, who created a number of small raspberry fondant chocolate -jesuses in 1994, which were sold to visitors to an Australian cultural center, the Gorman House Arts Center in Canberra. A American newspaper condemned his act of portraying Jesus on a chocolate, and in the answer, Manderson brilliantly decided to create an actual life-size chocolate of Jesus, which he called “Trans-Ubstantiation 2”. The work was issued in public in 1994 in Easter, with Manderson inviting the public to eat his flawless confectionery.

Enter Tom Waits, who published the song ‘Chocolate Jesus’ five years later on his album ‘Mule Variations’ album with the Grammy prize price. (If you didn’t have the pleasure, let this article fall and let yourself be listened to.)

The lyrics describe a boy who goes to a confectionery shop every Sunday to get his filling of chocolate jesuses.

Waits said he was inspired not to write this song after learning Manderson’s work, but testamins, a candy product with a cross that is printed on it, and a Bible verse on the packaging.

“My father-in-law tried to interest me for this business company,” he said in an interview with the David Letterman Show in 1999 and weighed another of his great stories. “You are these little sucking with little crosses. If you are on the road or something, and you cannot worship as you are used to, or during the week you can have one of these little testamin, and somehow it brings them into contact with their higher strength.”

The song is essentially a playful leap in those who use religion only as a feel -good mechanism, and compares those who only compared the hypocrite Bible biblical cherry picking for the superficial, conscience storm to the endorphins published in the brain when children have their sugar up. Faith then stops going through faith and more about the evils that many oblige in the name of religion.

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George Michael – ‘Jesus to a child’

“And what did I learn / From all this pain/ I thought I would never feel the same / About each / Or something again “

This does not seem to be that either.

Without a doubt, “Jesus to a Child” is one of the most urgent and beautiful songs of the deceased artist, a personal homage that George Michael’s grief refers after the loss of his first love, Anselmo Feleppa.

He met Feleppa when he appeared in Rio de Janeiro in 1991, and later shared: “He was the first love of my whole life.”

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“I was happier than ever. Fame, money, everything just faded in comparison.”

Feleppa died of an AIDS-related brain hemorrhage in 1993, and given the fact that Michael had not emitted as a gay at the time of the publication of the song in 1996, many interpreted the song as an ode in faith.

Oh, the irony, taking into account the detention -worthy attitudes of most organized religions compared to any deviation from the heteronormativity.

“Jesus to a child” became George’s first loner who entered the British charts under first place. Until his death in 2016, the artist would dedicate the song Feleppa when he performed it live.

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After the death of the singer, the founder of the British charity organized Childline, Dame Esther Rantzen that all the license fees from ‘Jesus’ were secretly donated to the charity that offered a consulting service for children and teenagers who did difficult times.

Try to hear this song and not take tears.

Nirvana – “Jesus doesn’t want me for a sunbeam”

“Jesus, don’t want me for a sunbeam / Sun rays are never done like me / Do not expect me to cry / For all the reasons they had to die / Never ask your love for me “

This song was originally recorded by the Scottish Outfit The Vaselines and remains better known for the Nirvana cover, which the original title of ‘Jesus wants to go to me for a sunbeam’ does not want to change me for a sun beam ‘.

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The Vaseline has designed the song as the parody of the Christian children’s anthem “I am being a sunbeam”, and Nirvana’s version seems to take this baton and continue to run when you consider Kurt Cobain and the band openly about homophobia and sexism. Cobain even said that he wished he was gay to only annoy homophobes, and often wore clothes Protest against sexism.

“If I can wear a dress, I can be as female as I want it,” he told La Times in a push in the Macho underfloor, which he loathed in the skirt scene. “I’m a heterosexual … big deal. But if I were a homosexual, it wouldn’t matter either.”

He also admitted to spraying in his hometown of Aberdeen “God is gay”, and repeatedly stated that he had no time for any form of apathetic behavior.

“I am disgusted about what we allow to continue, after how indestructible, sluggish and guilty we do not get up against racism, sexism and all these other” eats “, over which counterculture jammes and enforce the same settings every evening in their television and in the magazines.”

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For Nirvana, “Jesus not me for a ray of sun” was a song about the rejection of a hypocritical belief system that does not celebrate the tolerance it sermon. Because sun rays “never be made like me”.

The flaming lips – ‘Jesus shoots heroin’

Before you reject the inclusion of this song as a childish provocation, you should consider the stories behind the previous songs and open your mind (and ears) for it.

Let’s start with the first texts: “Well, I never really understood religions / Unless it seems to kill a good reason / Everyone has their own ideas / And you know you will always do it /Nowadays are needles under my skin / Jesus shoots heroin … “

From the debut of Flaming Lips’ debut from 1986 “Hörer it’s” is less about comparing religion with a drug than a comment on the corruption of religion and how frustration is present when society remains complacent in view of the suffering.

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This or it could be read as a pessimistic ditty that even Jesus would shoot about the current state of the world. Your call.

However you want to interpret it, the front man Wayne Coyne had a healthy sense of humor and distance from ‘Jesus shootin’ Heroin ‘in 2017 and told the Red Bull Music Academy. at the same time.”

Whether demanding or strange, it is an underestimated song that deserves an inclusion in your Easter recruitment list.