Having a degree in English is virtually worthless, though I must confess it has provided me with many skills that—though they are unprofitable—are rather amusing. In particular, I am quite fond of the skills I learned in my literary theory courses. After taking these courses, I learned that it is possible to interpret a text in any manner I pleased using absurd pseudo-philosophical ideas like deconstruction, psychoanalysis, or reader-response theory. These skills allowed me to write papers interpreting virtually any short story or novel as an ode to humanistic or atheistic values, to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as subversively pro-slavery, and to interpret songs like “A Boy Named Sue” as a rumination on the Oedipal complex and Nine Inch Nail’s “Closer” as an endorsement of Christian sexual mores and values. With a little French philosophy under my belt, there was no end to my capacity to spew bullshit.
With this history in mind, I was naturally quite bemused and overjoyed to read this post about misheard lyrics over at the War on Error blog. In the post, the author laments the dearth of humanistic music after realizing his humanistic/atheistic interpretation of of Kevin Rudolf’s “Let It Rock” was the result of a misunderstood lyric.
Owing to my aforementioned stunning ability to bullshit, of course, I found his lamentations premature. Virtually all songs have humanistic or atheistic themes if you’re willing to get your hands dirty with a little creative interpretation based on faddish and pretentious French literary criticism! “Let It Rock” is indeed a humanistic anthem! Whether he meant it or not, Kevin Rudolf has in fact penned a quite sobering song espousing humanistic values that entail a rejection of the false comforts given by both spirituality and an uncritical, shallow materialism.
The first verse of the song is so openly critical of religion that I wonder how I never noticed it before. Rudolf sings:
I see your dirty face
High behind your collar
These lines indicate that the person described by the song is a priest. “High behind your collar” is certainly a reference to a priest’s white clerical collar and his high status within a community. But this priest clearly has something to hide. He shelters himself behind his collar, using his religious status to hide his inequities. The singer, of course, can recognize his wrongdoings, emphasizing that the priest is impure and has a “dirty face,” and notes that the priest uses his religion as a barrier or shield against any recognition of his true nature.
What is done in vain
Truth is hard to swallow
So you pray to God
To justify the way you live a lie, live a lie, live a lie
Here the singer is emphasizing the wrongs of the priest on two levels. On one level, the priest is living a lie for devoting his life to a falsehood. His prayers to God are “done in vain,” most notably because God does not exist, and this is a truth that is “hard to swallow,” or difficult to accept. Thus, the priest has devoted himself to a lie. But on another level, the priest is only praying to God to justify his moral depravities. That is, the priest is an immoral man, and he tries to use his religion and faith as a justification for his wrongdoings. He lives a lie because he portrays himself as godly and moral when he is anything but.
And you take your time
And you do your crime
Well you made your bed
I’m in mine
These lyrics further show that the priest has done something wrong, this time blatantly. The singer directly states that the priest has committed a crime. He chastises the priest with the line, “you made your bed,” as in the common criticism “you made your bed; now lie in it,” thereby implying that the priest must accept the consequences of his wrongdoing. In essence, then, the first verse describes religious hypocrisy, and the use of religion to veil wrongdoing. The singer, as we’ll see, espouses humanistic values that are not seeped in hypocrisy or the factual inaccuracy of belief in a higher power, and he claims the moral high ground here, noting that he contentedly sleeps in the bed he has made for himself; he exclaims, “Well you made your bed / I’m in mine.”
The second verse expands on these themes, explaining that the origin of the priest’s faith stemmed from a rejection of the world, from a false dichotomy between meaningless materialism and false religion:
Now the son’s disgraced
He, who knew his father
When he cursed his name
Turned, and chased the dollar
Here we can see that the priest came to religion from a position of materialistic values and moral emptiness. “The son,” an obvious reference to Jesus, is disgraced by the priest’s current abuse of his faith and his moral hypocrisy, but the priest has always been a disgrace. In the past, the priest knew his father (that is, he believed in God, the father) and cursed His name by chasing material wealth, possessions, and money. The next lines explain that he would later come to reject the pursual of material wealth:
But it broke his heart
So he stuck his middle finger
To the world
To the world
To the world
As can be seen, the priest’s past decisions to chase money and material wealth “broke his heart.” He didn’t find any satisfaction in meaningless consumption and hedonism. This, in turn, led to his denial of the world, to his becoming a priest. He denied reality, sticking his middle finger to the physical world, and instead immersed himself in an unreal world of superstition and religion, abandoning an extreme of empty materialism for an extreme of religious hypocrisy. The priest who came to God after rejecting a meaningless hedonism is still living a lie, for neither worldview is correct or ultimately satisfying.
And you take your time
And you stand in line
Well you’ll get what’s yours
I got mine
Here we see the result of the priest’s turn to religion. His denial of the world, indeed, his contempt for it, allow him to “take his time” with life, to not seek to live each moment to its fullest, and to instead merely “wait in line” for a judgment from God that will never come. The singer, naturally, recognizes that the priest will get nothing from a rejection of the world and a turn to religion, noting that his own humanistic perspective on the world allows him to get the most out of life. In that sense, the priest will wait to get what’s his, and receive nothing, while the singer proclaims, using the past tense to emphasize its fulfillment, “I got mine,” as he has already seized his opportunities and lives life to the fullest and need not wait for a fictional savior. There is also a double meaning at work when the singer tells the priest, “you’ll get what’s yours,” as the singer is implying that his own humanistic ethical principles are more than capable of cutting through his religious hypocrisy and judging him as morally depraved, as we will see from the chorus.
The chorus, then, is where the humanistic values truly shine. The singer loudly yells:
Because when I arrive
I, I’ll bring the fire
Thus, the singer recognizes that there is no God, no hell, and no divine punishment. Instead, judgment must be meted out on humanistic principles, by individuals. There is no hellfire awaiting the priest for his sins, but humanistic values and ethical principles can judge the priest. In that sense, then, the humanistic singer “brings the fire”; not literal fires as in hell, but figurative fire as in moral condemnation and judgment from a humanist who can see through the priest’s attempts to hide behind religion. The singer himself will judge the priest for his moral wrongdoing, based upon his humanistic ethical principles.
Make you come alive
I can take you higher
With these lines, the singer emphasizes further his humanistic perspective. Humanistic principles can give life and meaning and purpose; they can make you “come alive” and embrace life, living for truth instead of falsity. And they can take one beyond an empty materialism. Humanistic principles can “take you higher” than that.
What this is, forgot?
I must now remind you
Let It Rock (rock!)
Let It Rock (rock!)
Let It Rock
With this final rejoinder, the singer reminds us all that life should not be negated through religion or a shallow materialism. Morality and judgment are possible through humanistic principles (they allow you to “bring the fire” of judgment) while embracing reality as it is rather than inventing an unknowable spiritual realm to hide within. The singer encourages us in the end not to reject life but to enjoy it for what it is: in other words, to let it rock! Life can have the joys of hedonistic materialism and the meaning of religion—all that is required are humanistic values.
So far in the song, we’ve seen a materialistic priest reject the world after being unable to find happiness in a shallow materialism and a meaningless search for wealth. We’ve seen this person become a man of faith, a priest, and yet still succumb to his inner demons, to commit crimes and live a life of hypocrisy, his depravity hidden underneath his religious status. In this way, the song is both a criticism of religious values and the sort of materialistic nihilism often posited as the only other alternative to religion. In the end, though, the song is critical of both views, seeking a middle ground of secular humanism, a naturalistic philosophy that rejects the supernatural and unknowable and gives us purpose and meaning through rational principles. The first verses clearly chastise religious hypocrisy and the inability to find answers in the spiritual, but the next verses are just as critical of rampant materialism, mostly by letting the inanity of the purely materialistic perspective speak for itself.
Thus, Lil’ Wayne embodies the spirit of empty, meaningless materialism with his lyrics in the song, in which he raps about accumulating wealth, “my jewelry is louder than an engine sound,” and sexual hedonism. At one point, he lists off a string of girls names, implying that he’ll make them remove their tops and have their “panties drop.” These rap lyrics, though, are likewise followed by singer Kevin Rudolf’s fiery rejoinder of a chorus, in which he reminds Lil’ Wayne that humanistic values reject his empty hedonism as much as they reject religion. His own humanism allows him to “let it rock” and enjoy life while still maintaining meaning and value, allowing people to truly “come alive” and take things “higher.” It is obvious that Kevin Rudolf is attacking both views, the false values of religion and the meaninglessness of hedonism, because only at this point—when the song has presented both the religious priest and the materialistic rapper—does Rudolf sing the chorus twice, once for each worldview his humanism rejects.
In a final rejoinder to both the empty materialism embodied by Lil’ Wayne and the religious hypocrisy of the priest who rejected the world, Kevin Rudolf sings a plaintive cry to end the song:
I wish I could be
As cool as you
And I wish I could say
The things you do
But I can’t and I won’t live a lie
No not this time
Essentially, the singer admits that he wishes he could enjoy the shallow materialism of a Lil’ Wayne when he says “I wish I could be / as cool as you”; likewise, he wishes he could make pretenses at moral certainty and purity, like the hypocritical priest, when he croons, “I wish I could say / the things you do.” In the end, though, the singer recognizes that both the priest and the shallow materialist are living in bad faith, seeped in a world without meaning or a world with false meaning, and he rejects both the unyielding hedonism of Lil’ Wayne and the unfounded asceticism and hypocrisy of religion. As a humanist, he can both enjoy the world for what it really is (let it rock) and live a life of purpose and meaning (bringing the fire and taking you higher). He refuses to live either lie, and accepts reality for what it is.
