"Original Bad Choice" Edition
1. "Don't Miss You at All," Norah Jones
2. "At the Bottom of Everything," Bright Eyes
3. "Changed Your Mind," Chris Isaak
4. "Ft. Worth Blues," Steve Earle
5. "Lumina," Joan Osborne
6. "All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down," The Mavericks, feat. Flaco Jimenez
7. "Gone for Good," The Shins
8. "Low Desert," R.E.M.
9. "Pin," Yeah Yeah Yeahs
10. "Misunderstood," Wilco
When she had a hit with the Relish CD, Joan Osborne caught some heat from religious conservatives. They didn't like her discussing the possibility of God being a "slob like one of us." They weren't amused by her frank portrait of a street prostitute juxtaposed with St. Teresa. But I thought they missed out. The truly scandalous song on the disc was the album cut "Lumina." Check this out from the second verse:
Eve took the fruit, Eve bit the fruit
Juice ran down her chin.
Babies will put things in their mouths,
Never heard of sin.
She drills the theological underpinning of an entire religion in one verse. Now that's religious subversion. If you're going to attack someone for her ideas, at least take on the really scandalous ones. For me, the song gives voice to my long-ago gut rejection of original sin.
3 comments:
Pretty slickly done. Without "original sin" the rationale for God sending his son/ taking human form is gone.
Of course, a lot of people still give creedence to the idea of a mystical garden where two people lived forever until a talking snake convinced them to take the magic fruit.
(screwed up the first comment)
I need to borrow this from you or get off my lazy keester and check it out from the library. In my more conservative days, I didn't care for "One of Us" until I heard a few of her other songs (most notably "St. Theresa").
Your quote recalls the opening chapter from a book I once read called In the Devil's Garden...the relevant excerpt may be read on Amazon...
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