Dear God: Mind Your Manners
XTC's protest letter to the Almighty pontificates on human and spiritual fallacies
Protest songs come in all forms and flavors. When the world is falling apart due to perpetual wars, omnipresent poverty and general suffering and injustice, who do you contact?
The Almighty of course.
Thoughts and prayers may not get through, so the British rock band XTC sang a letter to God instead.
It’s hard to confirm, whether or not, this communique reached its heavenly addressee, but it sure stirred up a stink on earth.
Imagine an agnostic musician talking to God and giving the supreme deity a dressing down of sorts. Folks are going to get a bit angry.
No God, No Mercy
It’s a good sign when protest songs elicit other protests. That means the message is being heard loud and clear.
Dear God was released in the mid-1980s, a time of relative peace and tranquility. The uproar came from religious groups who were dissatisfied with the song’s lyrics, the ones questioning the validity of the Big Guy in the Sky.
Protesters sought to ban complicit radio stations and there was a lot of talk about freedom of expression and faith - the usual debate suspects.
Of course all the hubbub surrounding the song led to its rise in the music charts and its overall commercial success. Sometimes a hit record appears from the most primal of emotions.
It was all good for XTC, except for the hate and violence.
According to Wikipedia sources, Dear God provoked an abundance of hate mail to the band and at least one bomb threat to a U.S. radio station. All this negative action caused the band’s lead singer, Andy Partridge, to argue:
If you can't have a different opinion without them wanting to firebomb your house, then that's their problem.
Hey God, Be My Pen-pal
When I was a school-age boy in Texas, I had a pen-pal that lived in the faraway state of Alabama. We wrote letters back and forth every few months for a year or so.
Nowadays, I don’t remember his name, only that his dad worked for N.A.S.A., the space agency. I guess pen-pal letters were the prototype precursor to e-mails.
Dear God reminds me of those letters. It’s a very personal act to someone that you really don’t know. It’s a kind of crap shoot to see if you connect with them on any level.
XTC did not soft-pedal anything, they figured God could handle the hard stuff.
The song starts off with a nasty reminder that God is not taking care of business:
But all the people that you made in your image See them starving on their feet' Cause they don't get enough to eat from God I can't believe in you
Ouch!
The disillusionment continues as God is accused of “the wars you bring” and “the babes you drown.” Where are the miracles? What are the benefits?
In a fatalistic sense of disbelief, XTC cannot help to conclude that all these global sorrows can only mean one thing:
And it's the same the whole world 'round The hurt I see helps to compound The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Is just somebody's unholy hoax
At the heart of the matter lies the fact that XTC cannot reconcile a divine supreme deity that is unaccountable for actions on the earthbound terrain.
So, to summarize the situation, XTC extols that:
You're always letting us humans down
Coda
Protest songs are emotional. They can lift you up to rise together in rebellion. Or they can bring you down into the depths of frustration and hopelessness.
That’s why it’s important that songs are interpreted by the individual, not en masse. If the latter happens it usually means a collective soul is vibrating on the same wavelength.
Dear God is raw emotion set on attack mode. We’ve all been there, when beliefs struggle with reality. Letting it all out can either get you in trouble or evoke an emotional purging.
Now we know why God never got an email address.
As a songwriter, I search for strong lyrics that are not surrounded by a buffer zone. I prefer candid, direct and powerful.
XTC set the tone, sent the message and went for the jugular of God Almighty.
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