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The Stories Behind the Songs on This Single
Wed., May. 3. 2023 6:19pm EDT
J. Jackson, lead singer and lyricist for ApologetiX here again.
Here are the stories behind the songs on our ninth single of 2023:
30 DAYS IN A ROW
Escaping addictions is like blasting off from a planet in a rocket ship. The further (time and distance) you get away from that planet, the less gravitational pull it has on you. Then you just have to resist the temptation to revisit that planet. Although we've previously released songs like "Addicted to Christ" and "Cöstly Trüth," this parody is the closest we've come to an Alcoholics Anonymous-type anthem.
In many AA groups, members are given coins or chips to mark significant milestones in their sobriety. The first is 24 hours. The second is 30 days. Others follow as the months go by, but making it through that first day and first month are super-significant steps in the struggle for sobriety, whether we're talking about alcohol, drugs, or sexual addictions.
I got the idea for "30 Days in a Row" on January 28, 2021. It's fitting that the artist we're spoofing is Humble Pie, because you have to be willing to eat a lot of that in a 12-step program like A.A. Consider the first three steps:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Although I wrote a feature story on A.A. as a journalism major in college, alcohol was never a big problem for me, but as a Christian striving to overcome temptation, I understand besetting sins, and the same principles apply.
VIOLENT GIRL
There are a multitude of unsettling stories in the Book of Judges. This is one of them. In chapter four, the Israelites had done evil in the eyes of the Lord, so He gave them into the hands of the Canaanites, ruled by King Jabin and the commander of his army, Sisera, who cruelly oppressed them for 20 years.
God used Barak, inspired by the prophetess Deborah, to defeat the enemy troops, but Sisera himself escaped to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. Sisera thought he'd be safe, because Jael's husband had an alliance with King Jabin. However, Jael apparently felt no such loyalty, and she administered the coup de grâce to a sleeping Sisera while he hid himself in her tent.
As Judges 4:21 specifically says, "She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died." We set the stage for this event in our 2016 parody "Barak and Deborah," which briefly mentions Jael at the end but doesn't talk about what she was going to do.
I got the title for "Violent Girl" on July 1, 2022, although I wasn't sure whom it would be about (other options could've included Jezebel, Athaliah, Delilah, Herodias, or her daughter) nor did I get any other lyrics until March 16, 2023. Once I settled on Jael and got the line "what you went and did makes my hair curl," I was able to hammer out the rest pretty easily.
We took some artistic license and nicknamed her "Jelly" at the end of each chorus, just as we called Dorcas "Dorky" in our 2018 parody "She's Not Dead."
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