Heaven Never Seen

sicAbout this time last year, 80’s Sheffielders ‘Heaven 17’ played a free gig from the top of the Sheffield Hallam University building roof. There was a large projection of the band on the outside of the university building so a friend and I walked into the ‘gig’ by accident as we passed through the centre of Sheffield, it was a sunny day and it seemed quite a young and fun place to be that evening.



I didn’t recognise any songs except ‘Temptation’, but I remembered (whilst swimming the other day) that there was a song which affected me, or it caused me to feel annoyed. Looking through their tracklisting now I think it must have been the song ‘Hands up to heaven’.
The lyrics repeat: ‘oh it feels so good, the people move as one, everyone raises their hands up to heaven’ .



http://www.last.fm/music/Heaven+17/_/Hands+Up+to+Heaven?autostart



The annoyance I was having was that people gathered at the concert were so easily sing along to the lyrics of this and other heaven 17 songs, which refer to church experiences. Perhaps the songwriters did have some informed understanding of what they wrote about in this and other songs, but what about the enthusiastic audience?

So many people sang along with passion but most of these people probably didn’t have any experience of even going into a church gathering and seeing for themselves what experiences of Christian worship might really be.

The other thing that was nagging at me was the shallowness of how so many artists use Christianity as a reference point for creative ideas. It’s like they run out of ideas of things to write about when they’re sick of lovesongs.



There are names of bands and albums for a start… Genesis, Jesus and Mary Chain, Judas Priest, Bingo Jesus, Jehovahkill. Reverend and the Makers …. And how weird are reverend and the makers anyway….




The audience seem to be all under 20 and uniformly with their hands in the air to the ‘reverend’ John Mclure, an opinionated creative guy with comments about young peoples lives, just like a chirpy personable local reverend.






Other songs that refer to or comment about Christianity that open cause for discussion…

REM ‘Supernatural superserious’
Alanis Morissete ‘Forgiven
Boy George ‘Church of the poison mind’
Depeche Mode ‘Blasphemous rumours’
Tracy Chapman ‘ Speak the word’
Belle and Sebastian ‘Get me away from here I’m dying’
Nick Cave ‘Praise Him’
Divine Comedy ‘Eye of the needle’
Crash Test Dummies ‘mmm mmm mmm mmm’
Genesis ‘Jesus he knows me’