Over the weekend, I had some silly be-bop song running through my head, after hearing it on a CD my wife was playing in the kitchen. Perfectly harmless, and no permanent damage. I’ve already forgotten what song it was.
Today, something more ominous has gripped my mind… I’ve got two songs from “Jesus Christ Superstar” running through my mind — “This Jesus Must Die” (which is bad enough) and “Judas’ Death.”
This is what I get, I suppose, for not going to Mass yesterday. I had a cold, I was scheduled to administer the Eucharist, and under the circumstances I thought it best not to show.
Now this.
Sample lyrics from the first song:
Caiaphas:
Fools! You have no perception
The stakes we are gambling
Are frighteningly high
We must crush him completely
So like John before him
This Jesus must die
For the sake of the nation
This Jesus must die
Must die, must die
This Jesus must die…
And a sample from the second:
Judas
My God, I saw him
He looked three-quarters dead
And he was so bad
I had to turn my head
You beat him so hard
That he was bent and lame
And I know who everybody’s
Going to blame
I don’t believe he knows
I acted for our good
I’d save him all the suffering
If I could
Don’t believe
Our good
Save him
If I could
Now, in my defense, the first song really has some appealingly clever lyrics, before you get to the bloodthirsty ones:
Annas
What then to do about Jesus of Nazareth?
Miracle wonderman, hero of foolsPriest
No riots, no army, no fighting, no slogansCaiaphas
One thing I’ll say for him, Jesus is cool…What then to do about this Jesusmania?
How do we deal with the carpenter king?
Where do we start with a man who is bigger
Than John was when John did his baptism thing?
But nevertheless, this is not a good way to start the week…
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And I don’t think I had heard either of those songs recently…
But the lyrics are permanently etched in my brain, because I was actually in the cast of a local production of JCS in the early 80s. I was an apostle: “Look at all my trials and tribulations…”
The Germans call these songs that stick in your head “ear worms.”
One thing to get them out of your head is to choose a different catchy melody, or, better yet, to find a similar song to overwrite them…
I used to get “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” stuck in mine.
And then there’s the Seinfeld class “Master of the House.” Ahhhh!
I like Don’t Worry, Be Happy–great sentiment.
I try to choose pieces like Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass or Beethoven’s Sixth that have great, catchy melodies that I don’t mind…