Holy heck, it's top of the God pops

Today is Easter Sunday, which is an annual day of celebration for that time a chocolate egg fell from heaven and killed the Easter Bunny to forgive our sins.

The UK singles chart is a pretty godless place. A quick scan of the current top 40 singles chart and I can see songs about Dracula, swimming, dancing and loving each other, all of which sounds terribly non-Christian. Erm. Probably.

To celebrate the day Jesus rose from being cross and ascended to Heaven nightclub – I really need to brush up on my Bible knowledge – here are the ten most successful Jesus-themed songs in the UK singles chart.

Disclaimer: I looked up the words “Jesus” and “Christ” and didn’t go much beyond that, so if I’ve missed something, feel free to condemn me to all seven circles of hell. Oh and they're in order of chart success, so we'll be ending on a couple of number one smashes.

10 – Longpigs: Jesus Christ (number 61, 1995)

While there were more prominent proponents of the Sheffield’s Britpop scene, the ‘pigs were absolutely brilliant. Jesus Christ was full of their typical yearning and the lead singer looked a bit like a future Matt Smith. Their guitarist went on to be in Pulp and their original drummer used to play for Cabaret Voltaire, which makes them the most Sheffield band ever.

9 – Delirious: White Ribbon Day (number 41, 1997)

An obscure choice here, but this did precede a four-year run of top 40 singles for this Christian praise & worship outfit. White Ribbon Day is proper religious – there’s praying and the cross and hallelujah and all that kind of thing. The gospel truth is they sounded like U2 from the late 1980s, which ticked boxes for people that found 1990s U2 too MacPhisto-ish.

8 – Green Day: Jesus Of Suburbia (number 17, 2005)

“Everyone's so full of shit,” preaches Billie Joe Armstrong on this nine-minute epic beloved by Green Day fans. This is, apparently, Green Day doing a Bohemian Rhapsody,  and the track is split into five movements, like me after a bowel exam. I was never a massive ‘Day follower, but it feels like we need their agit-angst more than ever now. 

7 – Kanye West: Jesus Walks (number 16, 2004)

Before things went south for West, he made tracks full of braggadocio and brilliant beats. Jesus Walks was super militaristic, but this was okay in the mid-2000s because the US army had definitely never done anything bad ever. Ahem. These days West is just full of braggadocio and bullcrap. Shame because his College Dropout years were banging.

6 – Ash: Jesus Says (number 15, 1998)

The video for Jesus Says has the camera spinning around and around, like you’re inside a washing machine. The effect prompted protests from fans who complained of nausea, but they needn’t worry coz they could just pop their vom-splattered t-shirt into said washing machine. “God give me strength,” sing Ash on Jesus Says. Fair comment.

5 – Depeche Mode: Personal Jesus (number 13, 1989)

For far too long, I thought a Personal Jesus was a personalised Christ service in which He followed you around all day and made bitchy comments like ‘You look fat in that jumper’ and ‘That blusher’s far too gay’. Anyhoo, this is Depeche Mode at their peak, and it gave the impending 1990s permission to blend rock and synths and change music forever.

4 – Marilyn Manson: Personal Jesus (number 13, 2004)

For far too long, I thought a Personal Jesus was a– oh hold on, we’re already done this. I’d lost track of Marilyn Manson and where the allegations were up to, so I googled “is marilyn manson a wrong 'un” and Google’s AI bot responded by saying that the truth is “subjective”. So that’s settled then. I do not want Marilyn Manson to reach out and touch me.

3 – Morrissey: I Have Forgiven Jesus (number 10, 2004)

Oh holy hassocks of hell. Am I in some kind of purgatory? Is writing this blog post punishment for my multitude of sins? Here comes another person I would not to choose to be stuck in a lift with. I wouldn’t even follow behind him on the stairs. I much preferred Mozza when he was a lyricist and not a polemicist, although maybe he has always been both.

2 – Cliff Richard: Saviour’s Day (number 1, 1990)

Finally. A perfectly normal pop star. Cliff’s religious output is universally awful, and his triptych of Christian chart-toppers – Mistletoe And Wine, Saviour’s Day and The Millennium Prayer – have the same linear drop-off as the Godfather trilogy. Still, I’m glad Cliff exists. If he wasn’t around to be God’s representative in the pop charts, we’d have to choose Ye and that wouldn’t do at all.

1 – George Michael: Jesus To A Child (number 1, 1996)

You’ve got to have faith, and you’ve got to have this caramel-smooth cheese-fest from king George. Without telling anyone, George Michael donated the royalties from Jesus To A Child to the ChildLine charity. That makes this paeon to a lost lover the most Christian track in this list.

Not much electronic music in this list. Jeez, get it together Jesus.

Further Fats: Delirious' bid for number one: the rock delusion? (2010)

Further Fats: Warning! Dinosaurs are taking over the UK album chart! (2021)

Do stop believing: the rock music fad is over

Thank goodness this awful guitar fad has passed. The moment the Beatles clanged out seven years worth of jangly pap, it was over before it started.

It was revealed yesterday that only three of the top 100 tracks of 2010 in the UK were rock songs, the best-selling of these being Glee's Don't Stop Believing.

If you're not aware of the Glee phenomenon, think of Miley Cyrus and Justin Biebpipe doing an ACDC covers tour. Now replace Miley and Justin with a baboon flinging its own excrement, and replace ACDC with every treasured memory you've ever had. That's Glee.

It turns out guitars were just a temporary fad. All those bedroom garage bands banging out noisy chords and committing it to four-track in a cousin's shed? It was the musical equivalent of space hoppers, Tab cola and happy slapping.

Now HMV have a golden ticket for turning their sales around. Have half their shops sell only neo-rave, breakcore and 8bit Kraftwerk classics, while have the other half contain hundreds of burning Fender Stratocasters, constantly on fire like sick Olympic flames and proffered worshipful sacrifices by a rock-hating public.

Here, god of guitar-death, have my collection of coloured Green Day vinyl I just smashed with a hammer, thanks be to Aphex.

Truth is, of course, guitars have never been popular. A quick finger through the UK's top ten best selling singles of all time shows all we really care about is Elton John, Boney M and (shudder) Robson And Jerome. The rockiest tracks are by the Beatles, Wings in Kintyre-mode and those bastians of death metal, Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

The shroud of lies perpetuating the rock myth has fallen and we can get back to good honest dance music like Black Eyes Peas, Basshunter and Doop.

All those annoying acronyms to memorise guitar strings can revert to something sensible like Every Band Goes Dance, Amen Evermore. And we can all have our hair short. And we can wash. With water and everything. We may even use soap. Imagine that.

Rock is dead. Long live Jean Michel Jarre's impending Autechre remix album.

(Please send letters of complaint to Axl Rose, A Hammock, Backstage At The O2 Arena, Londinium, 1LLU 51ON.)

Fat Roland challenges Words Dept: Words Dept breaks down in tears

I quite like a challenge. Like licking cats and sticking them to walls.

I once sledged in the snow with over a grand in my back pocket. It was a fun challenge and I still didn't regret it, even when I had to dry all the notes by hand afterwards.

And so, when I challenged Words Dept to name his favourite electronic albums, it seemed as simple as asking someone to do something as easy as lick a feline or lose all your life savings in a snow drift.

But it seems some considerable (and tearful) hand-wringing ensued, and it resulted in this brilliantly creative piece in which a journalist reviews his top ten as part of his top ten, and David Quinn calls me

"the über-lord of electronic music blogging"

which is obviously true, but I'm trying to keep it quiet. The moment this blog gets popular, it cheapens. Like Charles And Diana commemorative plates or Green Day picture discs.

Anyway, read Word Dept's Top Ten(ish) Electronic Music Tracks I Like. I am already a particular fan of numbers two, three, four, five, six and eleven, and the description in number six has a strange kind of genius about it.

:)