Religion is such a strange thing to me. My brain cannot accept an extraordinary claim without extraordinary proof to back it up.
I remember a street preacher shouting that the only way to get to heaven and eternal paradise is to believe in god and that for all those who don’t believe, they would go to hell. My mother had recently died and she was the nicest person on the planet, and an atheist. So I asked him if she was going to hell, and he truly believed that she was.
If god did exist (which he clearly doesn’t), then why would he be so utterly cruel and discriminatory?
I do not swear much in real life, so it was a difficult decision to leave the F bomb in the first verse, but on reflection it was the only word I could use to express the sentiment. I do not apologise to anyone if it has offended you.
I’d got the first line in my head for several weeks. ‘Dear God I want to ask you why you let my loved ones die”. The minor chords were obvious to me and I knew what they were before I even picked up the guitar.
Now that I had the theme for the song, I started writing lyrics down whenever they popped into my head. This happened at random times but mostly when I was out walking the dog. I think it is important not to try and force songwriting. For example, I never sit down and think ‘I’m going to write a song today’. It just happens when it happens. Creativity cannot be forced in my opinion.
I’ve so many notes with lines of lyrics for this song, and most of them didn’t make it into the final version because they were either not good enough, or they didn’t convey the message. As it turns out, there are only two verses in this song, but I think that's enough. It could have been so much longer but that would risk boring the listener.
Musically it is not that adventurous. Whilst it has a couple of ‘jazz’ chords, for the most part it is standard minor chords. I wanted to have a section which lifted, and this was where I sing ‘Dear God you’re not that great’. The chords rise and then fall creating a sense of drama and dread. Similarly, the arrangement amplifies this with the strings, backing vocals and percussion. Dynamics are important in songwriting. The listener has to be taken on a journey.
The arrangement for this came together really quickly because I could hear it in my head before I’d recorded the first note. Whilst I wrote it on guitar, I knew that it had to start with a piano. Instruments were added as the song progressed and I think there’s even a kitchen sink in the bigger sections.
I do not feel like I am that good on lead guitar as it is not my main instrument, so I really had to work hard at writing parts which sounded good and complimented the song. In the end, to me it sounds a little Pink Floyd and I was pleased with the end results.
As the song was developing, I was aware that it was becoming quite dark, so I attempted to throw in some dark humour. I’m particularly fond of the lines;
“I want to thank you for the pain, Dear God please don’t do that again”
And
“Dear God this is not a joke, the logic disappears in giant clouds of smoke”
It's funny that when I released a demo mix of this on YouTube, several people contacted me to say how much they liked this song as it resonated with how they felt about religion. In fact, I’d say that this song has attracted the most interest in that sense out of all the songs I have released so far. Even some of my devout religious friends took the time to comment, although not everyone was impressed by the F Bomb.
Oh well, you can’t please everyone!!
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