The 1980s were a time of controversy for a variety of reasons.
The Cold War and nuclear proliferation.
Wall Street trading.
The Yuppie movement.
The Space Shuttle disaster.
Reagan.
Wheel of Fortune.
Sally Ride.
Heavy metal.
Suicide.
Wait, I'm getting off track here.
In the CCM world, controversy was found everywhere. Amy Grant had her detractors when she crossed over with Unguarded. Gospel purists decried the sound of electric guitars present in the music of Petra and others. Jimmy Swaggart declared war on Christian rock music in general. And then, the whole question of ministry-versus-entertainment was ever-present throughout the decade.
Enter Steve Taylor.
Taylor pointed a long, gangly finger at everything he saw was wrong with the Church in general, but he did it in such a way as to not sound completely condemning in his condemnations. His first EP, I Want to Be a Clone, injected catchy new wave aesthetics to a distinctively pointed point of view, to great success. His follow-up album, Meltdown, garnered him critical acclaim and help him snag a Dove Award nomination for Artist of the Year (he was up against Amy Grant, so you can guess how THAT went).
He partnered with label mate Sheila Walsh on Transatlantic Remixes, toured with her, and performed at Greenbelt Festival in the UK, where he shot a live album and video. Taylor had his finger on the pulse of pop culture and how it affected the Church at large, but also realized how much that pop culture should be utilized by the Church to forward the message of the Gospel.
One thing Taylor nailed better than anyone in CCM was satire. This was never more explosive and misunderstood as when his magnum opus, I Predict 1990, was released to the unsuspecting public.
The main culprit? #8 on our countdown, "I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good."
I honestly wanted "Jim Morrison's Grave" to be the Taylor track on this countdown, but "Clinic" was the only choice, specifically due to the controversy surrounding it. It didn't help Taylor much that the humor in the song's title would be lost on people unfamiliar with his music, or that many claimed the album cover art stylistically resembled the art of tarot cards (not a conscious choice by Taylor, but the comparisons are kind of obvious). And a quick dive into the lyrics did reveal that, yes, a character in the song is talking about bombing abortion clinics.
As an example of satire having its place and time, "Clinic" is freaking genius. Utilizing the instruments of the era (saxophones were HUGE in the mid-'80s) and set to a driving beat with a catchy hook, the song explores the exploits of an ice cream man who sees trouble brewing on the horizon when an abortion clinic opens up in his town. He's not really concerned about the morality of the situation; instead, he wonders more about the fate of his future potential customers.
Now, I don't care if it's a baby or a tissue blob
But if we run out of youngsters
I'll be out of a job
And so I did my duty cleaning up the neighborhood
I blew up the clinic real good
As you can guess, some people had a real problem with this song, even though the satire was dangling right in front of their faces. The language used by the character in the song isn't typical of what Taylor uses in most of his other songs that tell stories, such as "Drive, He Said," "Jung and the Restless," and "Am I In Sync?" Also, when coupled with the video, the humor is more front and center; you can see Taylor's tongue firmly planted in his cheek. Definitely worth a watch.
The backlash began pretty much immediately, and Taylor wrote about it in the liner notes in the Now the Truth Can Be Told anthology:
Bombing abortion clinics is never the right thing to do, and in this day and time, our Ice Cream Man's self-righteousness echoes what we hear from Antifa, the social justice warrior crowd, and others who use violence, doxxing, and threats to snuff out perceived or actual injustices. We all know it's wrong, and most of us don't engage in behaviour like that.
Or at least, we didn't use to.
Try and catch me, coppers
You stinking badges better think again
Before you mess this boy around
I've hung in Saigon just to see the special effects
I've hung from gravity boots
For my Napoleon complex
Previous entries in this series:
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #21
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #20
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #19
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #18
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #17
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #16
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #15
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #14
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - Honorable Mention
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #13
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #12
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #11
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #10
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #9
There Is No Box.
Zach
The Cold War and nuclear proliferation.
Wall Street trading.
The Yuppie movement.
The Space Shuttle disaster.
Reagan.
Wheel of Fortune.
Sally Ride.
Heavy metal.
Suicide.
Wait, I'm getting off track here.
In the CCM world, controversy was found everywhere. Amy Grant had her detractors when she crossed over with Unguarded. Gospel purists decried the sound of electric guitars present in the music of Petra and others. Jimmy Swaggart declared war on Christian rock music in general. And then, the whole question of ministry-versus-entertainment was ever-present throughout the decade.
Enter Steve Taylor.
Taylor pointed a long, gangly finger at everything he saw was wrong with the Church in general, but he did it in such a way as to not sound completely condemning in his condemnations. His first EP, I Want to Be a Clone, injected catchy new wave aesthetics to a distinctively pointed point of view, to great success. His follow-up album, Meltdown, garnered him critical acclaim and help him snag a Dove Award nomination for Artist of the Year (he was up against Amy Grant, so you can guess how THAT went).
He partnered with label mate Sheila Walsh on Transatlantic Remixes, toured with her, and performed at Greenbelt Festival in the UK, where he shot a live album and video. Taylor had his finger on the pulse of pop culture and how it affected the Church at large, but also realized how much that pop culture should be utilized by the Church to forward the message of the Gospel.
One thing Taylor nailed better than anyone in CCM was satire. This was never more explosive and misunderstood as when his magnum opus, I Predict 1990, was released to the unsuspecting public.
The main culprit? #8 on our countdown, "I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good."
I honestly wanted "Jim Morrison's Grave" to be the Taylor track on this countdown, but "Clinic" was the only choice, specifically due to the controversy surrounding it. It didn't help Taylor much that the humor in the song's title would be lost on people unfamiliar with his music, or that many claimed the album cover art stylistically resembled the art of tarot cards (not a conscious choice by Taylor, but the comparisons are kind of obvious). And a quick dive into the lyrics did reveal that, yes, a character in the song is talking about bombing abortion clinics.
As an example of satire having its place and time, "Clinic" is freaking genius. Utilizing the instruments of the era (saxophones were HUGE in the mid-'80s) and set to a driving beat with a catchy hook, the song explores the exploits of an ice cream man who sees trouble brewing on the horizon when an abortion clinic opens up in his town. He's not really concerned about the morality of the situation; instead, he wonders more about the fate of his future potential customers.
Now, I don't care if it's a baby or a tissue blob
But if we run out of youngsters
I'll be out of a job
And so I did my duty cleaning up the neighborhood
I blew up the clinic real good
As you can guess, some people had a real problem with this song, even though the satire was dangling right in front of their faces. The language used by the character in the song isn't typical of what Taylor uses in most of his other songs that tell stories, such as "Drive, He Said," "Jung and the Restless," and "Am I In Sync?" Also, when coupled with the video, the humor is more front and center; you can see Taylor's tongue firmly planted in his cheek. Definitely worth a watch.
The backlash began pretty much immediately, and Taylor wrote about it in the liner notes in the Now the Truth Can Be Told anthology:
The director of an abortion clinic in San Diego threatened a lawsuit against a video show that aired the "Clinic" clip, and when I called her at the show's request to explain that it was satire, she was so whining and obnoxious that I ended up giving her an earful of what I thought of her profession, then begged her to sue me. Australian TV's version of Geraldo Rivera did a story on me prior to a national tour there, claiming I was advocating blowing up abortion clinics--the story got picked up by all the major newspapers and eventually forced cancellation of most of the tour (forever dispelling the show biz dictum "all press is good press"). I even spent an hour on the phone with an elderly bookstore owner in Arizona—he'd pulled the album because he thought it was wrong to blow up abortion clinics, and I congratulated him on his integrity in choosing principle over commerce before gently explaining to him the song's satirical intent.More so for the content and its controversy than for the song itself, "Clinic" deserves a spot on this countdown. Taylor's take was funny inside of a topic where normally, nobody found any humor, and it was also clear that he felt the lyric in the song "the ends don't justify the means anytime" was enough of a disclaimer to give people some relief after the shock of the song's character's intentions. And to be fair, if we all sit back and look at a situation within the ridiculousness that it inhabits, we can understand Steve's perspective.
Bombing abortion clinics is never the right thing to do, and in this day and time, our Ice Cream Man's self-righteousness echoes what we hear from Antifa, the social justice warrior crowd, and others who use violence, doxxing, and threats to snuff out perceived or actual injustices. We all know it's wrong, and most of us don't engage in behaviour like that.
Or at least, we didn't use to.
Try and catch me, coppers
You stinking badges better think again
Before you mess this boy around
I've hung in Saigon just to see the special effects
I've hung from gravity boots
For my Napoleon complex
Previous entries in this series:
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #21
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #20
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #19
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #18
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #17
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #16
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #15
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #14
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - Honorable Mention
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #13
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #12
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #11
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #10
Top CCM Songs of the 1980s - #9
There Is No Box.
Zach
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