The heartening “Glacier” isn’t just one of the best nontheistic songs-it’s one of the best songs I’ve ever heard.
In it Grant, who is gay and identifies as an agnostic, offers words of comfort to anyone who has been told that who they are sick or wrong because of who they are. He offers an intimate critique of fundamentalist Christianity in the song “JC Hates F-ts,” but it’s the closing song off his most recent album Pale Green Ghosts that packs the biggest wallop. Perhaps this is because his music is astonishingly personal. John Grant’s two solo albums have both been met with universal critical acclaim-his debut Queen of Denmark was one of only a few albums to ever be labeled an “Instant Classic” by Mojo. “There are days when people are so nasty and convincing / they say things beyond belief, that sting and leave you wincing / And to boot, they say their words come straight down from above / And they really seem to think that what they’re doing counts as love… What they want is commonly referred to as theocracy… No one on this planet can tell you what to believe.” Grammy Award-winning band The Flaming Lips is fronted by Wayne Coyne, an atheist who has joked that he wishes he believed in God-but you wouldn’t know about that yearning when listening to the breathtaking “Vein of Stars” or their other songs with atheistic themes, like the dizzying “ Do You Realize?” “Maybe there isn’t a vein of stars calling out my name… Nothing there to see you down on your knees… Maybe there is no heaven / There’s just you and me / Maybe that’s all who’s left / And if there is no heaven / Maybe there is no hell / Who knows?” I’ve realized it’s better if we just stop talking in that language.” I like mountains and oceans and stuff, which is where I’ve always felt some sort of power of meaning, but that’s not necessarily spiritual. Before ‘Faith/Void,’ I was reading a lot of atheist literature and I realized, no, I’m not a spiritual person, because I don’t know what that means. “People would always ask me, ‘Are you a spiritual person?’ and I would say yes, but it made me uncomfortable. Club, Callahan said that he was not raised religious, and that for years he struggled to talk about his beliefs. Reflecting on the song in an interview with The A.V. “Faith/Void” is a wonderfully meandering atheist hymn that closes Callahan’s splendid Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. In order for a song to qualify for this list, it had to be either explicitly atheistic, express a skeptical or Humanistic viewpoint, or come from an artist who has identified in some way as nonreligious. Below is the final installment of my list of the 20 best atheist or nonreligious anthems. Though Steve Martin said that “ atheists don’t have no songs,” there are plenty of great songs with nontheistic themes.
Photo by Zach Klein, via Wikimedia Commons.
However, most of the time I remember why I thought they sucked and bury them again.Björk performing at the Hurricane Festival in 2003. Every now and then, a cd that I thought was a stinker ends up being a gem I wasn't able to appreciate properly at the time of purchase. I have it buried in my stack of cds to pull out on some random day far in the future to give another listen. While I didn't "frisbee it out the window of my car" after the first listen, I was very disappointed. I didn't even make it through the whole "album", I frisbeed it out the window of my car after about 20 minutes of sheer unbelief. Their latest is the most incoherent piece of shit ever. If Wayne was in this room right now I would never stop cockpunching him. I have taken a lot of razzing over the years for liking these guys (I have no problem with that). I really love Yoshimi and AWWTM but the new one sounds like they passed out while the tape was rolling and they released the part right after they all woke up with giant hangovers and pissed and got a big drink of water. Is it just me or does their last album just suck beyond imagining?
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