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The Stories Behind the Songs on This Single
Sat., Mar. 9. 2024 1:51pm EST
J. Jackson, lead singer and lyricist for ApologetiX here again.
Here are the stories behind the songs on our fifth single of 2024:
WON THRU FIGHTING
This parody is about the powerful foes opposing us in spiritual warfare.
I once heard Pastor Steve Brown talk about something a Bible scholar he respected had pointed out to him: Satan rarely appears in the Old Testament, but he's all over the New Testament, including all four Gospels. Why? The scholar suggested it might be because God knew we should never face the devil without Jesus.
It is interesting: In the Old Testament, Satan only shows up officially in Job 1-2, 1 Chronicles 21, and Zechariah 3 (although arguments could be made that he's also in Genesis 3, Isaiah 14, and Ezekiel 28). In the New Testament, however, he's mentioned (as Satan or the devil) in at least 19 books. You'll also find a similar vast disparity between the Testaments in regard to demons.
When we released our Hall and Oates parody "You Just Might Need Kung Fu" in June 2023, I never dreamed we'd spoof "Kung Fu Fighting" nine months later. If spelled properly, our title would've been "Won Through Fighting," but "Thru" looks more like the "Fu" in "Kung Fu Fighting."
Moreover, to be grammatically correct, I should've sung "If the battle were won through fighting," but I think the average American would say "If the battle was won through fighting." It's also easier to sing and sounds more like "Everybody was kung fu fighting."
Speaking of which, for Christmas in 2019, my daughter Janna got me a shirt that said "Surely not everybody was kung fu fighting?"
JESUS IS GOD'S SON
I remember kids in our neighborhood (including me) singing a spoof of "Seasons in the Sun" about Richard Nixon back when it was a hit and Watergate was headline news.
I got the idea and entire first chorus for "Jesus is God's Son" on November 19, 2019. Although I worried that some people might see the title and presume it was a Sunday-school song, I thought the "We enjoy being dumb" line was too good to pass up.
Still, I didn't do anything else with it for the next four years. When the concept for the ApologetiX '74 project came to me on October 11, 2023, I knew it was time to finally finish this parody.
The week before I recorded my vocals on February 27, 2024, I briefly considered changing the title to "Jesus Is the Son," which is structurally closer to "Seasons in the Sun," but somehow "Jesus Is God's Son" sounded better when sung, plus it made a bolder statement.
I had recently learned that one of my young-adult daughters had a friend who didn't know who Judas was. If Bible awareness has declined to that point, how many people even know who Jesus really is? So I decided to use the more specific title.
This is the first song David Michael mixed for ApX after Wayne Bartley retired from that responsibility. David sent us his initial mix on Saturday, March 2, 2024 ... exactly 50 years after "Seasons in the Sun" hit #1 on the Hot 100 ... Saturday, March 2, 1974. No, we didn't plan it that way; maybe Somebody else did? We released it on March 3.
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