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The Stories Behind the Songs on Our 13th Single
Sat., Aug. 14. 2021 12:21am EDT
J. Jackson, lead singer and lyricist for ApologetiX here again.
Here are the stories behind the songs on our 13th single of 2021:
SORRY ALL THE TIME
My original working title for this tune was "Hardly All the Time," but I found myself with hardly any lyrics. Then I got the line "My goal was to study all the time," which really is an accurate description of how I felt when I first came to Christ and started reading the Bible.
As for the second chorus, where it switches to "sorry all the time," a lot of people honestly don't know what "ApologetiX" or "apologetics" means. I've joked for years that it's because we're a sorry batch of individuals, and I've alluded to the old 70's line "Love never means having to say you're sorry" by saying "ApologetiX means always having to say you're sorry."
We've done a number of "who we are and what we do" and "who I was and what I did" songs over the years, and I wasn't really eager to do another, but it came together naturally and quickly, and I added a number of details not included in those previous parodies.
Though I can't say I planned it, the two songs I wrote and sang right before this one fit perfectly with it to form a trilogy:
"He Healed Me" alludes to when I gave my life to the Lord in 1988. "I Can Read About You" describes how I felt as a new Christian, trying to grow in my faith and immersing myself in the Bible in the midst of friends, co-workers, and relatives who thought I was crazy. "Sorry All the Time" talks about how I gave up my rock 'n' roll goal and musician's ambitions, never suspecting that God would give me back my dream with a brand-new theme, teaching the truth through biblical spoofs.
OPPRESSION
I've always associated the song we spoofed here, "Obsession" by Animotion, with a song we spoofed a month before it, "Let's Go All the Way" by Sly Fox. "Obsession" went to #6 in 1985, "Let's Go All the Way" went to #7 in 1986. Both were blatantly lascivious, danceable synth-pop accentuated by hard-rock guitars.
We've done parodies about spiritual warfare before, including two Aerosmith parodies — "Read Ephesians" and "Back in the Battle" — but "Oppression" adds some new scripture references, like Ephesians 2:2, where Paul refers to Satan as "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" to go along with Ephesians 6:12-20, which was also referenced in the aforementioned Aerosmith spoofs.
This spoof also cites Daniel 10:13, where an angelic messenger tells Daniel he was delayed in responding to Daniel's prayer for three weeks by the demonic prince of the kingdom of Persia until the archangel Michael, whom he describes as "one of the chief princes," came to help.
"Oppression" is our second parody to feature my second daughter, Heather, on lead female vocals. The first was "Don't You Want the Baby" in 2020. Her voice also figured prominently in the choruses of "Job's Counselors" in 2021.
At one point, I considered calling this song "Obstetrician" from the perspective of Sarah and Abraham (while awaiting Isaac), but I couldn't see singing such a song as a duet with any of our female singers, let alone one of my daughters.
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