Parodeities

July 3rd, 2008

A parodeity is a secular piece of music retrofitted with Christian lyrics:

A perfect example of rock parody-as-study guide is “Learn Some Deuteronomy,” perhaps my favorite ApologetiX song. The tune is Def Leppard’s 1987 hit “Pour Some Sugar On Me,” said to be the greatest strip club song of all time. Here’s ApologetiX’s chorus:

Take your Bible - Shake it off
Everybody - breaks the law
Learn some Deuteronomy - can you name those laws
Learn from Deuteronomy - c’mon try because
Learn your Deuteronomy - you ain’t good enough
God’s Law - is tricky to keep - born again you must be, yeah

When ApologetiX plays this live, it rocks out with its cock out. The original Mutt Lange production drips with processed guitars and drums through Leppard-y echo. The ApologetiX version swings, with a raw distorted Gibson and power-pocket drums, and J. Jackson roughs up Joe Elliott’s vocal with a Jim Morrison-Glenn Danzig baritone. Singing it live, he leads the crowd and the lasers follow his arms up to the church’s steeple.

And on top of all that, Jackson manages to rhyme “read a little more” with “Habakkuk 2:4.”

[Via Blog of a Bookslut]

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 Responses to “Parodeities”

  1. Noumenon Says:
    July 5th, 2008 at 2:15 pm

    Bethlehem Rhapsody is great, especially around 2:50. But Baby Got Book should also be mentioned whenever the topic of Christian parody songs comes up.

  2. Noumenon Says:
    July 7th, 2008 at 9:02 pm

    Your spam filter ate my post, so you’ll never get to see my link to “baby got book.”

  3. John Says:
    July 7th, 2008 at 11:54 pm

    I’ve resurrected your original comment.

    (For the record, I linked to Baby Got Book a couple of years ago. Bethlehem Rhapsody is new to me, though.)

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