Pope, to two decimal places…
[Video][Website]
[2.08]
Katherine St Asaph: I do not hate this new prog track by the Pope. The fact that the Pope premiered a progressive rock song on a SoundCloud on Rolling Stone, that sounds like Daft Monk’s “Evangelos by Papathanassiou” or Gayngs, restores my faith in something, even if it’s just the inherent unsatirability of 2015. It’s also occasion for a lot of folks to get their memes or their Dawkins on, but I’m scoring this on the music. “Wake Up” is structured more like liturgy than rock, but skips over engaging with Christian rock history entirely, which is what makes it so bafflingly decent; thin mix aside, you could start the recording at 1:00 or 4:30 and pass this off as something you ripped from a VH1 countdown 15 years ago. But it won’t be bigger than the Beatles.
[6]
Edward Okulicz: A masterful bit of PR but only a workmanlike bit of prog. The sermon placed on top of it is just that — placed on top of it, as if an apology for not having anything else to do.
[3]
Anthony Easton: I miss the good old days when they commissioned composers and didn’t release tracks of them speaking over a track that cribbed from Vangelis.
[3]
Jonathan Bogart: This is why you hire Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel instead of doing it yourself.
[2]
Josh Langhoff: The pre-Pope part is post-rock, a genre that has never led anyone to sing, dance, or rejoice. The post-Pope part sounds like Juanes without a hook. This song has failed to send me forth in the world to do anything except maybe fall down an Italian prog rabbit hole on YouTube.
[1]
Thomas Inskeep: a.k.a. Muse with special guest the Pope. Plus a trumpeter. I guess they’re going for a “youthful” audience with this proggy accompaniment to some Francis-can soundbites (and it’s not actually Muse), but it feels like a 70-something pastor’s idea of what is “hip” with “the kids.” (For the record, my own father is a 70-something pastor, and trust me, he has no idea what “the kids” are into.)
[2]
Alfred Soto: He’s not Klaus Nomi or Grace Jones, and the backing isn’t Trevor Horn and Anne Dudley. Makes sense that the track is as overhyped as the pontiff himself.
[4]
Jonathan Bradley: A bastion of global conservatism does something vaguely contemporary. As with his other efforts, we’re supposed to believe it revolutionary.
[0]
Brad Shoup: Pro sports teams do a lot of charitable work, too. But when the Washington Wizards fuck over the local faithful, it’s by paying Gilbert Arenas nine figures or stumping for publicly-funded boondoggles — not, say, by policing the bodies of trans individuals, policing the bodies of pregnant women, policing the bodies of everyone in the Catholic church via retrograde sexual policy, or evading responsibility for authorized agents who raped children. At least Washington had the decency to give us a legit jam.
[0]
Micha Cavaseno: I don’t know what’s the perfect metaphor for why I feel an unflinching desire to give this single a zero in music industry precondition. Like, if you’re a performer for a certain role and you’re replacing people who’s prior occupations included the genocide of millions, does that reflect badly on you? And if your say, ‘label’, had been part of unsavory business practices with criminals who had a fondness for the assassination of judges, would you be guilty by association? (Geoff Rickley’s probably got some good insight to this sort of tension of responsibility right now). And if your single serves as the continued obnoxious neo-liberal media campaign for a millenia old organization that has embarrassed true believers in the merits of its teachings, despite being used throughout the ages as a vehicle for the corrupt desires of vile pigs, trying to do some 21st century PR restoration then IDK, I think me giving you a zero is the least I can do. And in the words of Mason Betha, “I’mma pray for you”.
[0]
Juana Giaimo: If you think you’re going through an excess of the Pope, imagine how it must be living in his homecountry, Argentina. I understand it: this Pope is cooler compared to other Popes, but we must remember that he is still a Pope — that is, the summit of an ultra-conservative ideology. And therefore, he lacks rock vibes. While his speech might be wise and encouraging to many people, in his first single, he sounds as if he lacked energy. Rather than waking us up, we might need to wake him up. But that’s alright; he never meant to be a rock star.
[3]
Will Adams: I have listened to this ten times, and the question I keep coming back to is: Why? Why bother when the fact of its existence is the only noteworthy aspect? The music is bland at best and embarrassing at worst, with Pope Francis’s speech haphazardly stapled on top. The context of its existence is already passé, seeing as the Popemania that gripped the world during his tour/PR blitz has dissipated to fumes by now. Music without purpose; I pray it goes away.
[1]