This is the latest installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Under the God by David Bowie and Tin Machine.
Lyrics
Skin dance back-a-the condo
Skin heads getting to school
Beating on blacks with a baseball bat
Racism back in rule
White trash picking up Nazi flags
While you was gone, there was war
This is the west, get used to it
They put a Swastika over the door
Under the God, under the God
One step over the red line
Under the God, under the God
Ten steps into the crazy, crazy
Washington heads in the toilet bowl
Don’t see supremacist hate
Right wing dicks in their boiler suits
Picking out who to annihilate
Toxic jungle of Uzi trails
Tribesmen just wouldn’t live here
Fascist flare is fashion cool
Well, you’re dead, you just ain’t buried yet
Under the God, under the God
Under the God, under the God
As the walls came tumbling down
So, the secrets that we shared
I believed you by the palace gates
Now the savage days are here
Under the God
Under the God, under the God
One step over the red line
Under the God, under the God
One steps into the crazy, crazy
Crazy eyed man with a shot gun
Hot headed creep with a knife
Love and peace and harmony
Love you could cut with a knife
Under the God, under the God
Under the God, under the God
I disagree with the assessment of this song as sacrilegious. Bowie was singing about the rise of neo-Nazism in the 1980s. The lyrics are intentionally clear. And Bowie laments that all of these things are allowed to exist “Under The God”.