There’s been much discussion in the British media this week about Christmas Songs. Whether they should be played in November (some shops have banned them until 1st December) and which one is the most annoying (the prize goes to Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas according to a UK poll by Huawei).
We wondered if there were any Christmas songs that speak to you. Or whether there are any songs that you associate with Advent or Christmas that warm your heart.
We’d love to hear from you. Just send an email to thomasg@methodistchurch.org.uk with the name of the song, the singer and an explanation about why & how the song speaks to you.
I’ve always found the balance or remembrance and advocacy for peace around Remembrance Sunday quite a challenge. Knowing that two of my Grandfather’s brothers were killed on the Somme and the impact that war had on a real family, it seems so important to remember but, at the same time, all the military emphasis reminds me that war is real now and I’m not sure that as a country and society we handle our responsibilities well at all.
So when I first heard this Mass for Peace it made a real impact on me. It shows so well musically this contradiction and forces the listener to engage with the complexity of what it means to be a person of peace. I’ve also been fortunate to see it live and the soaring voices are so cleverly arranged and take you off to a place of real contemplation.
In its midst is a “call to prayer” from the Muslim tradition as well as many many references to the Christian, Jewish and secular worlds (Tennyson, Kipling and the like.) While it is the most fabulous journey from beginning to end, all sorts of ideas wrapped in the Christian Mass, the section I’ve chosen here is the Agnus Dei
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Grant us Peace
In these turbulent political times that simple prayer seems so pertinent.
As we gather to remember this weekend, let us think about ways to strive for peace and to be beacons of that peace to others
It’s only in the last ten years that I have really come to appreciate the music of Elvis Costello. I think I was still into Abba when he broke through in the 1970’s and it took a couple of years for me to get to grips with New Wave/Punk. Having said that ‘Oliver’s Army’ is probably in my Top 20 songs of the 70’s. Yes 70’s – it was released in 1979.
As is the song that I’ve chosen. Although I’ve chosen Costello’s version, it was actually penned by Nick Lowe earlier on in the 70’s (so his version is included at the end of this short reflection).
In Lowe’s own words, the story behind the song is “I wrote the song in 1973, and the hippie thing was going out, and everyone was starting to take harder drugs and rediscover drink. Alcohol was coming back, and everyone sort of slipped out of the hippie dream and into a more cynical and more unpleasant frame of mind. And this song was supposed to be an old hippie, laughed at by the new thinking, saying to these new smarty-pants types, ‘Look, you think you got it all going on. You can laugh at me, but all I’m saying is, ‘What’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding?’
I love this song. I love it because it captures some of the feelings that I have when people ask me why I’m a follower of Jesus. That little bit of frustration that I have when someone doesn’t get why it’s so important to me. That bid of sadness that I have when I can’t seem to help them see what following Jesus means.
Peace and love are big things for me. I wish that we would expend all our energy and effort on ensuring we live on a planet where people talk and find ways of ironing out differences so we can live together peacefully; that we spent money on equipment and solutions to stop us destroying the planet rather than spending billions on destroying each other; that we recognise and understand that love in its many different forms is what we were created from and created for. I mean, what is so funny about peace, love and understanding?
I feel like I’ve known Bruce Springsteen all my adult life and that we have followed our faith journeys together, but of course that is ridiculous – he is a professional musician from New Jersey USA who was brought up in the Catholic Church from which he rebelled and left as a teenager, going on to be a global superstar, whereas I am a professional lawyer from Derby England who wasn’t brought up in the Church at all so rebelled by joining the Methodist Church and going on to be a…..professional lawyer!
Looking back, I can see that my
journey to faith was intertwined with my love of Bruce Springsteen’s music – at
first, I could not see the connection, but gradually I realised that they were
inseparable.
My first real encounter with
Bruce’s music was The River album, released as I started my second year of
University in 1980 – my life was developing in so many ways, away from home,
discovering love (of the unrequited variety initially) and a whole host of
feelings that were new to me, a feeling that in some ways my life was just
beginning and Bruce’s music was the backdrop to this – his were the only songs
that felt real in terms of their message and emotions.
I recall many evenings listening
to the whole River double album with my friend David in his bedroom, and when
David then obtained a cassette of the previous LPs, Born To Run and Darkness on
the Edge of Town, well I think we really did feel that we’d found the keys to
the universe!
At the time, both of us were
agnostic in our faith – over the years we both came to Christ separately and I
continued to enjoy Bruce’s music, including many amazing concerts,but didn’t
see the connection and, indeed, possibly felt there was a contradiction between
my Christian faith and Bruce’s music.
As the years passed and my faith
matured, I felt more able to examine Bruce’s songs and lyrics from a Christian
perspective and realised how much Bible imagery there was in there – I lost
count of the references to The Promised Land, for example! This in turn led me
to seek out actively Bruce’s own views on the Christian faith, but they all
seemed very negative, which I found in turn depressing.
Even the first time I heard Land
of Hope and Dreams, at Manchester Arena in 2000 I think, there was no lightbulb
moment – great song and words, but didn’t really think things through further
than that.
By 2012, and the Wrecking Ball album, I was more aware that
there was clearly an ongoing connection between Bruce and his Catholic
upbringing, for example the song Rocky Ground is full of biblical references,
but my first reaction as I heard the studio version of Land of Hope and Dreams
were of disappointment as it was far more “produced” than the live version I’d
enjoyed and made less of an impact I
felt…
…..And then, after 6 minutes 11
seconds of the song, as it faded to the end – there it was….”You just thank the
Lord” – even more glorious in it’s unexpectedness! I was driving and had to
pull over – feeling overcome as I realised that God was speaking through Bruce
and that he knew it and accepted it.
Since then, Bruce has spoken of
his love for Jesus in his autobiography (and his dislike of the Catholic
Church!) and I understand he is now a fairly regular Churchgoer even so, and
I’ve gone back and realised ever so clearly the Christian message of Love,
Hope, Redemption and Resurrection that shows so clearly through so many of
Bruce’s songs – with my fellow Bruce fan Reverend David Markay, we even put
together a service based on this – Searching For The Promised Land.
But nothing beats the moment when
I first heard Bruce sing “You Just Thank The Lord” and felt that connection –
not even the times since when I’ve listed to the live version (Still my
preferred version!) and let overwhelmed by God’s Love for me, a miserable
sinner.
So thank you Bruce, and Thank You Jesus – and remember everyone – “You Just Get On Board…..You Just Thanks The Lord….”
British film director, Danny Boyle, is renowned for being passionate about the music that he uses in his films. To him, they are part and parcel of the narrative. He says ‘they inter-breathe with the material you’re using, and I always love that.” A song or a piece of music in a film can be what helps the viewer connect once and for all with the story and message of the film. For Methodists who are ‘born in song’ – these words probably ring true!
Today’s choice is one of those songs for me. It comes from the film, ‘A Streetcat named Bob’ – based on the book by James Bowen about his experiences as a homeless street musician who is adopted by a cat. A cat that changes his life.
The song is written by Charlie Fink (who was lead singer with Noah & The Whale). It’s sung by Luke Treadaway who plays the main character, James. To me it just perfectly sums up a key message from the film and book – connection with others and how moments with others (even cats – and that’s not easy to say when you’re a dog person!) can lighten up our life and show us the way.
“Who are the people That make you feel alive? Are any of them Standing by your side? Are you chasing every sunset? Are you facing every fear? Are you reaching even higher? When your dreams all disappear?”
It takes me straight to the words from 1 Corinthians 12: 26 ‘If one part of our body hurts, we hurt all over. If one part of our body is honored, the whole body will be happy.’ (CEV)
At a time when homelessness is rising rapidly and with recent reports that homeless deaths rose by 22% last year, this story and it’s accompanying songs drive home the message of people who are hurting and the importance of ‘honouring’ those who hurt.
There’s one scene in the film where James is talking to his Social Worker about how having Bob has given him back his dignity and he realises this when a customer who bought the Big Issue from him called him ‘Sir’.
This scene caused a big reflection for me. It made me realise that the best thing about buying The Big Issue is that I share a short time with someone who is struggling & vulnerable but who at that moment gets to ask me about my day or can talk about their day or their dog or the weather or their dreams. They are needed at that moment – and are providing me with something I want. I may be showing some caritas – but they’re reflecting it back to me too.
Charity begins at home. Even if you don’t have one at that moment.
Avenham Park, Preston, Lancashire. 26th July 1992. The first ever Heineken Musical Festival in Preston – free music for the whole weekend!
It was a Sunday evening and I was lying back on the grass looking up to the sky – my friends Elaine and Alison lying alongside doing the same. Just listening. Just being. Letting music and the summer evening sun wash over us. In between sets, I decided to have a wander and ventured down to the Big Top to see who was up next.
A woman dressed in black with long, red hair and a guitar hanging across her body adjusting a mic stand glanced up quite nervously and looked across the gathering audience. There she was. There was the singer I had come to hear in particular. Kirsty MacColl. One of my all time heroes. Serious fangirling. The band struck up and I heard the familiar voice begin ‘I was 21 years when I wrote this song…’
Kirsty was such a role model for me as teenager and young adult. I wanted to sing like her. I wanted to dress like her. I wanted to be like her. There was something about her and her music that I felt immediately connected to. She didn’t fit the usual image of a female singer – she wasn’t plastic or shaped by the music industry. She looked like what I thought I would look if I was on stage. You always felt like you were watching and listening to the real Kirsty.
I could have chosen any number of her songs. All of them have a depth and a sense of reality about them – even ‘There’s a guy who works down the chip shop swears he’s Elvis’ rings true. Lyrics that amuse; lyrics that tell the truth; lyrics that capture everyday life.
In the end, I plumped for one of my most favourite songs of hers which was also the first song that she wrote and recorded. She was 16 when she wrote it and it was released in 1979. However, it took Tracey Ullman’s cover of it in 1983 to bring it the recognition that it deserves. I like both versions but if I was pushed to choose, I’d choose Kirsty – just because it’s Kirsty!
If you fancy comparing the two – here’s Tracey’s version:
Kirsty would have turned 60 yesterday – 10th October 2019. I still feel a sense of loss and anger about her death. But I give thanks for how she and her music brought light – and still brings light – to my little corner of the world. Thank you Kirsty.
It started with a mention on the John Peel show – me and my ‘O’ level schoolfriends used to stay up late listening to the show and then discussed the music played the next day in our maths lessons (the teacher was old and quite hard of hearing so we rarely got into trouble). Then there was a scratchy bootleg cassette tape of a concert covertly recorded by somebody. Then came ‘A’ levels … and still more discussions about what we are talking about today – one of the greatest bands and greatest songs of all time.
In 1980, came the release of this all-time great song by this all-time great band: Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division. In 2012, it was named as NME‘s Greatest Track of the previous 60 years.
It became an anthem for my teenage angst, frustrations about life, attachment challenges, relationship traumas and wrestles with academic studies. Little did I know that as the song gained more and more critical acclaim and then some commercial success that the band’s lead singer, Ian Curtis, would be so traumatised by his own struggles that on the eve of a global breakthrough and tour to the USA, he would take his own life. The tragedy had even more impact for me as he lived in the same area as me and is buried in a cemetery in my home town. His gravestone has the words ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ engraved on it.
Love – or at least the quest for love – had torn him apart. Love can do that. We can want it so bad but our own failings, lack of confidence and desperations can undermine the very thing we want so much. We endure crying in our sleep; experience inadequacy, risk rejection, emotional exposure and can end up unable to function. These are all sentiments Ian Curtis expresses in the words to this haunting and iconic anthem:
When routine bites hard And ambitions are low And resentment rides high But emotions won’t grow And we’re changing our ways Taking different roads
Love, love will tear us apart again Love, love will tear us apart again
Why is the bedroom so cold? Turned away on your side Is my timing that flawed? Our respect run so dry? Yet there’s still this appeal That we’ve kept through our lives
But love, love will tear us apart again Love, love will tear us apart again
Do you cry out in your sleep? All my failings exposed Gets a taste in my mouth As desperation takes hold And it’s something so good Just can’t function no more?
Love, love will tear us apart again Love, love will tear us apart again Love, love will tear us apart again Love, love will tear up apart again
The song took on an added hypnotic edge because it was produced by Martin Hannett – a hugely influential and genius of a producer who helped U2 become all they did. He took the original recording and worked on it through the night; re-recording at four in the morning the now familiar snapping and shattering snare drum that dominates the track. The dark lyrics, pained vocals and sound production developed an intense version of the song that captured the full angst and uncertainty that was around for many people at the start of the 1980s; angst and uncertainty I was very familiar with.
Having just listened to it again, I can feel the emotions rise and clearly remember the struggles – still there despite many years of processing feelings and emotions. So what’s this got to do with ‘faith’? Well, this song, this search for meaning and love, coincided with my search for faith. I found faith and was able to grow, receive a sense of healing and some hope for the future. Sadly, Ian Curtis never seemingly found faith and greater purpose and decided to end his life. This reminds me that ‘love’ is a complex, multi-layered big word, with lots of nuances, mysteries and possibilities encompassed within it.
At the risk of ending on a cheesy note, my hope is that we will find ‘God’s love’, and that the kindness, grace, compassion and healing it brings will never tear us apart but will instead bring a divine and hopeful new order*.
*a little play on words for those who know what happened to the remaining members of Joy Division …
And if you want to know more about New Order (the band that Joy Division became following the death of Ian Curtis) – here’s their website http://www.neworder.com/
This week has seen the 50th anniversary (26th September) of the ‘Abbey Road’ album by The Beatles. It was the last album in which all four members participated before the group disbanded.
I would guess that most people have a favourite song by The Beatles. There might be some who say they don’t know any Beatles songs because they’re too young but then they remember that they sang ‘Yellow Submarine’ at school or have sung ‘Hey Jude’ at the top of their lungs at a party.
My first ever album was ‘Rock n Rock Music’ by The Beatles. I remember playing it endlessly. I would come home from school, spend ages deciding which disc to play (ah the joy of a double album), slide the record from the sleeve, set it on 33 (and a 1/3) speed, flop down on the sofa and listen intently. I must have driven my parents spare! One thing is for sure – it began a lifelong love of the fab four from Liverpool.
I lived in Liverpool for a while. I loved it. I still love it. It left a lasting mark on my life and I won’t hear anything said against it. There are other places in the world that have captured my heart and that’s probably why the lyrics to ‘In My Life’ speak to me.
“There are places I’ll remember All my life, though some have changed Some forever, not for better Some have gone, and some remain All these places had their moments With lovers and friends, I still can recall Some are dead, and some are living In my life, I’ve loved them all”
Perhaps it’s being the ‘daughter of a manse’ that ‘In My Life’ resonates so much with the many places I called home. Or perhaps it’s being an adult who took the MAYC principle ‘live on a large map’ quite literally. Or perhaps I’m just getting older so people and places mean so much more to me. Whatever it is, the words from this song help me to acknowledge that life is a journey. That people come and go – and they leave their lasting mark on your life. That we may visit places only once but being there can stay with us forever. What can hold all of this together is love – love for people and love for those places that can mean so much to us. And this track just tips me the wink to take time, remember and give thanks.
Karen and I have recently been to the cinema. We went to watch Blinded by the Light. It’s the story of Javed a British-Pakistani Muslim teenager coming of age in 1980s Luton.
The comedy drama is based on the memoirs of journalist and documentary maker Sarfraz Manzoor and is directed by Gurinder Chadha, who was responsible for Bend it Like Beckham. So Blinded by the Light is a sort of ‘Sing it Like Springsteen’.
In the film Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics speak to Javed like nothing else. There is resonance between the working class struggles of Springsteen’s New Jersey and Luton England. There is a deep connection between the composer and the listener when addressing the relationships that so often concern and confuse a young adult making their way in the world.
In my own teenage years, during the 1970s, it was the music of John Lennon, Simon & Garfunkel and even the Sex Pistols that spoke to me. The Troubles in Northern Ireland were at their height, there was the Three Day Week, the Winter of Discontent and the ever-present threat of nuclear war. It was an interesting time to wrestle with adolescence. The lyrics of the songs I listened to in my bedroom helped open my mind to something beyond the immediate; they made me question my existence, and analyse what was going on in my life. Indeed I am quite prepared to say that they played a significant part in my becoming an ordained Christian minister.
It was the spiritual that sustained slaves in their long torment, and then drawn upon to help liberate them. A century ago music hall songs and brass bands inspired men and boys to volunteer for the trenches; five decades later the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam war demos were fuelled by their anthems.
Music is a powerful force; couple it with the right lyrics and almost anything is possible: from Gregorian chant lifting the 9th and 10th century Roman Catholic congregations into the heavenly realm or the hip hop of today transporting those on the dance floor to a very different place to the one that is so constraining.
Few can escape the influence of music on our lives. Get into the car and the radio may be tuned to light pop music or relaxing classics. Arrive at the supermarket and the sound system is playing Christmas songs in November.
Music can be the soundtrack of our years.
I often hear a song from the past and am able to associate it with an event in my life: a summer’s day, a particular experience, a journey, a holiday or a person I have known and loved.
Which of us who tuned into the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, will ever forget Elton John singing a variation of Candle in the Wind?
To this day Hymns and worship songs remain a strong feature of Christian worship. I believe that the hymns of Charles Wesley have sustained the Methodist people far more effectively than the sermons and theology of his more famous brother John.
Visiting a Muslim country would not be the same without hearing the Adhan, the call to prayer. And you don’t have to be a member of the Jewish community to be moved by the mourners’ Kaddish.
I recall Natasha Kaplinsky on Who Do you Think You Are? travelling to Belarus and to the city of Slonim where members of her family perished during the Holocaust. There she and her cousin Bennie climbed into the abandoned synagogue where their family had once worshipped. Once inside Bennie, a cantor chanted the mourners’ Kaddish. It was probably the first time the crumbling walls had absorbed its soulful tune since the city’s Jewish community was brutally massacred in 1942.
The film that Karen and I went to see was a reminder, as if we needed it, of how music and song can change a person’s life. It can speak more clearly, more loudly, more eloquently than any great philosophical work. It can be of greater assistance in life than a self-help guide. It can be a prayer to the Divine. It can even unite enemies.
Cyril was a member of the Church in which I grew up. During the Second World War he was a guard in a Prisoner of War Camp. On Christmas Eve he and a German soldier sang Silent Night/Stille Nacht, just as their predecessors had done three decades earlier during the famous Christmas Truce.
I end with the words of a song made famous by British rock singer and musician John Miles:
Music was my first love And it will be my last. Music of the future And music of the past.
To live without my music Would be impossible to do. In this world of troubles, My music pulls me through.
The Friday Fix 