The coming of Christ as a human being, as the Church's liturgy for Advent Sunday reminds us, is intrinsically connected with his second coming. Part of this blog's function (if it has actually had any) has been to use our festive focus on the coming of December 25th to explore humanity's fascination with looking at, searching for (and often fearing) any clearly defined end points. Quite apart from the sociology of apocalyptic speculation, the rush surrounding Christmas (and particularly any large shopping centre in the run up to the big day) can make us long for the apocalypse just to escape the chaos. Signing off the advent calendar, then, let's turn to a few moments when apocalyptic pop has gone all festive.
Weird Al Yankovic - Christmas at Ground Zero (1986)
What if they chose to drop the big one on Christmas day? Weird Al explores in typically upbeat fashion - While we dodge debris, let's trim the tree/ Underneath the mushroom cloud. This is probably the most well known festive tribute to the end of the world.
Sample lyrics: It's Christmas at ground zero
Just seconds left to go
I'll duck and cover with my Yuletide lover
Underneath the mistletoe
It's Christmas at ground zero
Now the missiles are on their way
What a crazy fluke we're gonna get nuked
On this jolly holiday
The Super Furry Animals front man imagines the last two human beings alive attempting to celebrate some form of Christmas together. Despite the dark humour of the situation, the song is strangely touching, as the two lovers uphold each other - it's his lover's "kisses" which see him through. Rhys has previously used doomsday imagery to even more staggering effect on the Super Furry Animals' "It's not the end of the world", in which apocalypse is a metaphor for the fear of two ageing lovers.
Sample lyrics:
Inside the concrete bunker Post-apocalypse Christmas We lick our wounds to kill the hunger Post-apocalypse Christmas (x4)
Even through a nuclear winter Here comes Santa on his reindeer It's the first Christmas of the post-apocalypse Post-apocalypse Christmas
Emmy the Great and Tim Wheeler - Zombie Christmas (2011)
As every other film these days is about the zombie apocalypse, why not imagine the event taking place on Christmas Eve? Ash front man Tim Wheeler and singer-songwriter Emmy the Great explore the scenario in their entertaining "Zombie Christmas" - which is probably actually one of the weaker tracks on a very, very good Christmas album ("This is Christmas"). The Shaun of the Dead style video is also a lot of fun. No doubt somebody will be along to make a film based on this scenario at any momen... What's that you say?Silent Night of the Living Deaddue out in 2013? To be fair, the talent behind it is top class, but I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the finished product.
Sample lyrics:
They don't feel the cold when it's 50 below The sit and suck the brains out in the snow And don't get caught beneath the mistletoe At the Zombie Christmas
All the angels singing, "Christmas time has come Oh man you better run, run, run" All the bells are ringing, Christmas time is here, I hate this time of year.
They came in through the chimney when the people in the house were sleeping They didn't fill the stockings and there wasn't anywhere to hide If we don't want to have our last noel, we better kick those zombies back to hell If we want to live to tell A Zombie Christmas
Sufjan Stevens - Justice Delivers its Death (2012)
To finish - a bleak but beautiful meditation on the link between our expectations of Christmas and apocalypse. On one of the standout tracks in an often bemusing (but generally wonderful) 5-disk Christmas boxset, Stevens mourns his own love of money and youth - embracing the apocalypse in the biblical sense as the coming of God's judgement and righteousness. A sombre, but appropriate place to finish.
Silver & Gold
Silver & Gold
Everyone wishes for it
How do you measure its worth?
Just by the pleasure it gives
Here on Earth
Oh, I'm getting old
Oh, I'm getting old
Everyone wishes for youth
How I have wasted my life
Trusting the pleasure it gives
Here on Earth
Lord come with fire
Lord come with fire
Everyone's wasting their time
Storing up treasure in vain
Trusting the pleasure it gives
Here on Earth
Oh, I see the end
Oh, I see the end
Everyone is waiting for death
How do you measure its worth?
Justice delivers its gift
Here on Earth
“Men’s courses will
foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said
Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is
thus with what you show me!” – Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
As we’ve all managed to survive the end of the world more or
less intact, it’s time to think about rebuilding our shattered civilization. What
will the post-apocalyptic landscape look like? The clean cut, sterile dystopia
of Logan’s Run? The barren wastelands
of the Fallout games? The badlands of
Mad Max or the sinister zombified
world of Resident Evil?
This is a theme which has been explored with various degrees
of success in recent years. Love them or hate them, My Chemical Romance’s Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous
Killjoys was an unusual record charting the battles of the fictional band (The
Fabulous Killjoys of the title) with a sinister corporation controlling a
post-apocalyptic desert landscape. Needless to say, I loved it – emo rock being
one of my foremost guilty pleasures.
Similarly ambitious was today’s effort from folk music hero
Jon Boden, who also serves as the frontman of the wonderful Bellowhead. Boden –
whose projects have also included releasing a different folk song for every day of the year – set himself the task
of charting a post-apocalyptic Britain through the medium of folk. Brilliantly,
he uses one of the most traditional forms of music to imagine a world of
radically new traditions, in which familiar elements of the modern world
combine with folk music to produce something which sounds simultaneously ancient
and disconcertingly of the here and now. “Dancing in the Factory”, for example,
recalls an ominous disaster which has destroyed society while also giving voice
to the frustrations of its young protagonist:
And all that
I can think about is wood smoke in the valley
Kisses in
the fallout shelter, dancing in the factory
That closed
so long ago, and no-one ever goes there now
Throughout the album, images of traditional
English country life combine with modernity in potentially disturbing combinations.
The church bells now ring out for “curfew”; parish boundaries are marked by “ivy
and barbed wire”; a sweetheart gathers “plastic bags in green and gold” for his
April Queen; another character ponders those who burn “sacrificial gasoline”, while
the traditional ceremony of beating the parish boundaries proceeds“Past the long neglected cars/Rusting in
suburban yards”. This post-apocalyptic society is traumatised – and in
responding to the end turns backwards. In today’s song, religion takes on an
ominous face as “preachers” recruit young men to further their schemes and
military endeavours, and the flooded world tries to forget the civilization
which continues to fall around its ears.
There is no hope in dystopia – but it can still
have potentially positive functions. As listeners in the pre-apocalypse world
we can (potentially at least) use the glimpse into the future to encourage us,
Scrooge like, to try and change things and avoided the flooded nightmare that
Boden imagines – “if the courses be departed
from, the ends will change”.
Don’t Wake
Me Up ‘til Tomorrow (Boden, 2010)
“Don’t wake
me up,” the blind man cries
“Spare me
your prophecies and your schoolboy lies
I can see
well enough when I close my eyes
Don’t wake
me up ‘til tomorrow”
For I have seen a thousand dreams
And dreamed
a thousand sorrows
Don’t wake
me up ‘til the grey cock crows
Don’t wake
me up ‘til tomorrow
The preacher’s
men were back last night
New sermons
on the common
And Sarah
James’ only son
Has left to
join their summoning
I saw her kiss
the boy goodbye
The
villagers all standing by
To watch the
child they never knew departing
And the
leaves are turning brown again
And
whitethorn blossoms on the lawn
And
everywhere the quiet shame
Of
hopelessness is dawning
But I have dreamed a thousand dreams
And dreamed
a thousand sorrows
Don’t wake
me up ‘til the darkness goes
Don’t wake
me up ‘til tomorrow
From
Bramwell down to Blind Man’s Copse
And in the
fields above us
The earth is
flecked with grey and white –
Paper
blossoms in the coppice
And here and
there the books still burn
The fire
consumes, the pages turn
We strike
like Titans to unlearn
And dream of
winter’s solace
But I have
dreamed a thousand dreams
And dreamed
a thousand sorrows
Don’t wake
me up ‘til the grey cock crows
Don’t wake
me up ‘til tomorrow
“Don’t wake
us up,” the sinners say
“Don’t take these foolish dreams away
No irony at all in today's song choice, which I will allow to speak for itself, and will hopefully offer some consolation for all those disappointed by the lack of apocalypse yesterday. If you want to read more on my thoughts on failed prophecy, you can take a look at this Manchester Evening News article. Otherwise, enjoy Matt Bellamy's take on the band's iconic album cover:
"The bloke's looking ambiguous and unusual...he's stood there and
he's holding a gas mask to look as if he's protecting himself from
something - an end of the world scenario. But something's happened and
he's taken it off. He's looking up and it's judgement day. The aliens have either come
down to earth or the chosen ones are flying away - and he's thinking '
why haven't I been chosen?' I think from that point of view sometimes!"
Declare this an emergency
Come on and spread a sense of urgency
And pull us through
And pull us through
And this is the end
This is the end
Of the world
And it's time we saw a miracle
Come on, it's time for something biblical
To pull us through
And pull us through
And this is the end
This is the end
Of the world
Proclaim eternal victory
Come on and change the cause of history
And pull us through
And pull us through
And this is the end
This is the end
Of the world
In the White House
situation room, President Obama paced nervously.
“The asteroid’s getting closer, damn it! We’ve got to use nuclear weapons!”
Gently, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta squeezed the president’s arm. It was a long time since he'd seen the Commander in Chief as agitated as this.
“Give Britney another
minute sir. If anyone can dance away the apocalypse, it’s her”. Obama sighed
and looked out of the window, stoic, but with fear growing in his eyes. He knew
this strategy was high risk. Dancing didn’t always avert a crisis. At times, it
even made things worse.With a shudder he
recalled the Irish attempt to use a Jedward\Riverdance mash-up to solve the
Euro-zone crisis. But what choice did they have? If the Mayan prophecy was to
be averted, then he’d just have to trust her…
If Britney Spears has taught me anything (and believe me,
she’s taught me a lot) it’s that
there is only one way to avert the apocalypse today – as the above video shows,
even as we speak crack teams of hipsters in highly impractical leather outfits
are gathering in sewers/underground clubs the world over to try and dance away
the end of the world. Either that or the apocalyptic events are causing them to
have some kind of fit (are the mad convulsions in the middle voluntary, I
wonder, or a reaction to fear?) It’s comforting to know that even when we feel abandoned and alone in this world, celebrities
are still there to protect us.
I first read about the December 21st 2012
prophecy in 1994. Sitting on the back step of my house on a blazingly hot
summer’s day, I remember imagining exactly where I would be when the fatal
moment hit. For some reason at that age I had the deluded belief that I would become
a police officer and move to New Zealand (a kind of reverse Flight of the Conchords, I suppose). I
could vividly picture the scene as I rolled through a small Kiwi town in my
patrol car as a terrible earthquake ripped through the ground and I jumped from
the vehicle, the heart of my well-toned handsome body pounding amid the
thunderous roar of apocalyptic destruction, screaming to my partner that this
marked the end of everything.
The reference to a well-toned and handsome body should be
enough to clue you in on the fact that I’m no prophet – my 11 year old self
certainly didn’t ever daydream about blogging in Manchester as the apocalypse
came to pass – but my fascination with the 2012 date is one of the things which
drove me towards a career in examining apocalyptic speculation. Of course, my
young self was incredibly naïve – I remember writing a short story in school in
1994 featuring a man who discovered that the Mayan prophecy was being covered
up, and being killed just as he was able to release the information on to the
internet to inform the world. Obviously, I now realise that putting information
on the internet is the perfect way to convince people that a prophecy is false. How’s that for a conspiracy?
The 2012 prophecy itself is derived from the Mayan long
count calendar, which began in 3114 BCE and comes to a conclusion, well,
today.This is the finale of the
thirteenth pik or baktun cycle a series of 395 year cycles within the grand
cycle itself. While there are relatively few references to what the Mayans
actually thought would happen at the end of the cycle, it is unlikely that they
actually expected doomsday – this was, after all, just one a series of long
count cycles. Nonetheless, there are some hints that some did expect catastrophic events. A tablet which came to popular
prominence in 2006, but discovered in Mexico some years earlier, for example,
suggests that the mysterious god Bolon Yokte will descend at the end of the 13th
b’ak’tun cycle. A similar tablet was discovered just this year in Guatemala.
Nobody really knows much about Bolon Yokte, but he is probably a war god,
associated with both the start of the current cycle and the underworld.
The Mayan prophecy itself came to prominence mainly through
the new age movement – popularised by thinkers such as Josee Arguelles and
Trevor McKenna - although it has also been linked to UFO and increasingly
conspiracy belief in recent years. Perhaps, today heralds alien invasion, or a
shifting of the poles, or the collision of the planet Niburu with Earth. Or
perhaps, as some new age theorists have suggested, it simply heralds the birth
of a new age of consciousness, which quite frankly, wouldn’t be all that bad.
Regardless of what actually happens, what better song to conclude with than the
Klaxons’ paranoid imagining of the “four horsemen” marching out today? I’ll see
you all tomorrow for a dose of apocalyptic disappointment… if we’re still here,
that is…
Four Horsemen of 2012 (Reynolds, Righton, Taylor-Davis, Halperin, 2007)
There’s a half man, half horse,
that still pollutes my thoughts
As he rides on a flame in the sky
He comes through the centuries with me on his entries
The kids and the cats watch him fly
Please catch that half horse as he murders my thoughts,
The fragments of flames anyway.
Halfman, half horse as he still pollutes my thoughts as he rides on a flame in
the sky
Four horsemen, twenty twelve!
Klaxons not centaurs!
Won’t you please catch that horse as he murders my thoughts.
I’m left with the fragments and flames
Won’t you please catch that horse as he murders my thoughts
I’m left with the fragments and flames
Four horsemen, twenty twelve!
Klaxons not centaurs!
There’s a half man half horse that rides through my thoughts as he rides on a
flame in the sky.
He comes through the centuries with me on his entries
The kids and the cats watch him fly
There’s a half man half horse that still pollutes my thoughts as he rides on a
flame in the sky
He comes through the centuries with me on his entries
The kids and the cats watch him fly
Four horsemen, twenty twelve!
Klaxons not centaurs!
David Foster Wallace’s Infinite
Jest is a deeply weird novel. Set in an America in which much of the nation
has become a dump for toxic waste and corporations buy the naming rights for
years (“The year of the Depend Adult Undergarment” provides the temporal frame
for the book), the novel is a darkly humorous dystopia in which various
characters seek the Infinite Jest, a
film so entertaining that those who have viewed it lose all will to live when
they return to reality - its creator having committed suicide by microwaving
his own head.
The Decemberists’ breakthrough hit, the 2011 “Calamity Song”,
is both a meditation on the themes of the novel and an exploration of the wider
American fascination with the apocalyptic. The song’s invocation of Wallace's book
are clear in its references to “The year of the chewable Ambien tab” and the
video, in which a group of teenagers play the fictional game of “Eschaton” – a tennis
based take on nuclear warfare which features prominently in Infinite Jest.
Yet the concerns with apocalyptic (which are, to some
extent, there in the book) resurface throughout the lyrics, which were penned
during the 2008 election. “When I was
writing it”, explained singer Colin Meloy in a 2011 interview, “Sarah Palin was
talking about how everybody was going to move to Alaska when the end times come”.
Palin herself is imagined as the “Dowager Empress”, with John McCain reduced to
the “Panamian child” (he was born on an air base in the country). With Pete Buck playing along on the 12 string,
the song has a lot of fun lampooning Palin, comparing her unfavourably to the
notorious early twentieth-century miser Hetty Green – who was reputed never to
wash to save money on soap.
Where apocalyptic thought was welcomed by
individuals like Palin, the song openly attempts to display the horrific
effects of the desire for the end (We
heaved relief/As scores of innocents died). This makes the imagined society
of the future even more interesting. Is this real? A take on the novel? Or an
attack on the possibility of any society whatsoever post-apocalypse? With only
one day left to the Mayan prophecy, we won’t have too long left to find out…
Calamity Song (Meloy,
2011)
Had a dream
You and me and the war at the end times
And I believe
California succumbed to the fault line
We heaved relief
As scores of innocents died
And the Andalusian tribes
Setting the lay of Nebraska alight
Till all the remains is the arms of the angel
Hetty Green
Queen of supply-side bonhomie bone-drab
If you know what I mean
On the road
It's well-advised to follow your own path
In the year of the chewable Ambien tab
And the Panamanian child
Stands at the Dowager Empress's side
And all the remains is the arms of the angel
And all the remains is the arms of the angels
And you've receded into loam
And they're picking at your bones
Will call cold
We'll come home
Quiet now
Will we gather to conjure the rain down
Will we now
Build a civilization below ground
And I'll be crowned
The community kicked it around
And the Andalusian tribes
Setting the lay of Nebraska alight
'Til all the remains is the arms of the angel
'Til all the remains is the arms of the angels
Mainstream pop is often seen as an empty, meaningless genre.
After all, most of the songs that hit the top of the charts are disposable ear
candy, aiming no higher than getting us onto the dance floor or humming along
as we go about our daily lives. But even the most banal song out there
reflects, in some way at least, the society which produced it, and can often
work to highlight some of the central concerns for those who listen to it.
Take That are one of the most enduring acts within British
popular music. Beginning life as a boy band in the early 1990s, they broke
the hearts of teenage girls around Europe when they called it a day in 1996.
Reforming amid much nostalgia in 2005, most industry watchers expected the band
to return to their hit songs, fill the arenas and watch the money roll in. Talk
of “new” music was greeted with scepticism, until their MOR anthems lodged
themselves at the top of the charts and refused to be budged. Their 2010 album Progress (which saw errant member Robbie
Williams return to the fold after a successful solo career) was their most
surprising – experimenting with a bit of musical innovation and, perhaps most
bizarrely of all, showing an obsession with the apocalypse.
This shouldn’t come as a total surprise. After all, Take That member Mark
Owen had achieved a rare solo hit with his song “Four Minute Warning”, in which
he contemplated a response to his looming annihilation by approaching nuclear
missiles. Attempting to chart a society in denial about its own imminent
destruction, Owen’s lyrics are surprisingly bleak for an early noughties number
one single, painting a picture of apathy in the face of catastrophe:
Four minutes left to go, is this
the end then?
Message on your stereo, four minute warning.
Everybody wants to know, what should we do?
The official story's a four minute warning.
Sasha stands in his yellow cafe,
The heart of the city is here, so he tells me,
Sitting on his red leather sofa, he's rolling another,
Man, I'll see you when I see you.
Amusingly, Owen concludes that he’s
wasted three of his final four minutes singing the song, ending with the
enduringly jolly couplet: I think of you, I think of me/Then I think of nothing, it's the end you
see! Of course, we as listeners have
wasted our final four minutes actually listening to the song, so the joke’s
presumably on us (it’s now on the Spotify playlist if you should have the urge
to hear it).
“SOS” sees similar apocalyptic
angst, and it’s perhaps unsurprising that Owen takes lead vocal duties. The
song provides a list of humanity’s failings, managing to find time to bemoan
the effects of government surveillance culture, global warming and consumerist
obsession with youth. The band even manage to fit in a classic JFK quote: “Without
debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed - and
no republic can survive”.
Yet much like Owen’s earlier effort, the lyrics reveal a
sense of cynicism over the possibility of the ability of humans to change. Where the tracks
from the last couple of days have expressed extreme cynicism about God’s role in apocalyptic events, Take That don’t deny the place
of the divine in bringing about the end. Yet here the song, for all its poppy
melody, hits its bleakest point – even as God prepares to intervene and the
righteous to ascend to heaven, humanity continues to engage in the same old
pointless politicking – We’ll be
practicing our politics/Defending all our policies/Preparing for apocalypse.
The lines recall Jesus’ words in Luke 17:27 “People were eating, drinking, marryingandbeinggiveninmarriage up to
the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all”; or the shattered survivors who wander
around a destroyed London in Peter van Greenaway’s Crucified City, only to discover the mute figure following them is
Christ, who has returned and been ignored.
As an apocalyptic afterword on Take That, we can turn to their
performance on the 2010 X-Factor
finale. The band were to perform their newest single, “Kidz” (sample lyrics:The daggers
of science/Evolving into violence/We're not sure where the fallout blows)
accompanied by dancers dressed as riot officers. The performance was vetoed for
Simon Cowell, who felt that the images would remind viewers of recent civil unrest –
the band opting to perform a song without any apocalyptic resonances at all,
their previous single - “The Flood”. You
can the band out of the apocalypse, but you can’t take the apocalypse out of
the band…
SOS (Owen, Williams, Howard, Barlow, Orange, 2010)
Save our souls we're
splitting atoms
Go tell Eve and go tell Adam
Liberate your sons and daughters
Some are gods and some are monsters
We'll get a five minute warning for divine intervention
With the satellites falling prepare for ascension
Under mind-control
We'll be practicing our politics
Defending all our policies
Preparing for apocalypse
Don't let the hungry serpent see you no
No, no, no, no, no
She'll let you fall asleep then eat you whole
It's like a bullet to
the head
It's an SOS, it's an S.O.S.,
Oh yes, oh yes, it's an S.O.S.
It's an SOS, it's an S.O.S.,
Like a bullet in the head, it's an S.O.S.
When the levee breaks
And Manhattan sinks
There won't be water fit to drink
When the winter's warm
And the summer's cold
The poison stops you looking old
You'll get a five second warning for divine intervention
And the satellites are falling prepare for ascension
As the earth looks on
The odds or probability
Of losing all capacity
To function as hereditary
No antibiotic can save
us now
No, no, no, no, no
We are the virus that we talk about
It's like a bullet to the head
It's an S.O.S., it's an S.O.S.,
Oh yes, oh yes, it's an S.O.S.
It's an S.O.S., it's an S.O.S.,
Like a bullet in the head, it's an S.O.S.
It's an S.O.S. it's an S.O.S.,
Oh yes, oh yes, it's an S.O.S.
It's an S.O.S., it's an S.O.S.,
Like a bullet in the head, it's an S.O.S.
Like a bullet in my head
Like a bullet in my head
It's an S.O.S., it's an S.O.S.,
Oh yes, oh yes, it's an S.O.S.
It's an S.O.S., it's an S.O.S.,
Like a bullet in the head, it's an S.O.S.
It's an S.O.S. it's an S.O.S.,
Oh yes, oh yes, it's an SOS
It's an S.O.S., it's an S.O.S.,
Like a bullet in the head, it's an S.O.S.
