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The Stories Behind the Songs on Single #5
Thu., Mar. 31. 2022 6:16pm EDT
J. Jackson, lead singer and lyricist for ApologetiX here again.
Here are the stories behind the songs on our fifth single of 2022:
HEIR OF OUR GOD
"Nazareth!" exclaimed Nathanael. "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" "Come and see for yourself," Philip replied (John 1:46 NLT). No, that's not a verse we cite in this song, but I couldn't resist, and it still applies.
I don't think many people expected us to spoof a song by Nazareth ... and if they did, they might have expected it to be "Love Hurts," the band's only U.S. Top 40 hit (#8). "Hair of the Dog" was relegated to the flip side of that single, but it's a hard-rock classic and has even been used in TV commercials.
ApX bassist Keith Haynie has been wanting us to spoof it for years. I first got the idea for this parody in May 2019. The title is based on Romans 8:16-17a, which says "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs — heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ …"
A second key verse mentioned in the lyrics is Galatians 3:26: "So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith …"
Yet another is 1 John 3:1-2: "See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is."
I'll let you look up Zechariah 2:8 and 1 John 5:18 for yourself. I like the term "son of the Best," because God is the Best at everything good.
THE BOYS AREN'T BACKIN' DOWN (2022)
It may have seemed a bit soon for us to remake this parody, but our original version came out over 12 years before this one. In contrast, the length between the first and second versions of some other notable ApX parodies is much shorter, like "Bethlehemian Rhapsody" (seven years), "Enter Samson" (five years), and "Hotel Can't Afford Ya" (three years). In fact, we did three versions of "I Love Apostle Paul" within 15 years!
The live version of "The Boys Aren't Backin' Down" from 2009 turned out fine, but I have long felt that a studio version could take it to a new level. I made a few lyrical tweaks here and there, but it's about 95 percent the same.
There were two places in the older version where the narrator referred to Jesus as "Christ" and, upon further review, I thought we ought to adjust that, since it's a messianic term and the character singing the song is obviously not a believer.
One of the other changes we added was having him refer to Christians as "the freaks," which not only rhymes well with Thin Lizzy's "the drinks," but also fits with the old term "Jesus freaks," which was often used disparagingly from 1970 till 1995, when the Christian band DC Talk turned it into a badge of honor.
In the final verse, I was a little concerned that listeners might mistakenly think I was saying "if the boys wanna bite, we're gonna get 'em" rather than "if the boys won't abide, we're gonna get 'em," but I figured it made sense either way, if you're talking about biting in a figurative sense.
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