Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCXVIII--Father John Misty: Holy Shit

I noted last week that I caught Taj Mahal performing "Queen Bee" on The Tavis Smiley Show and about a minute into his performance went looking for a pen and a piece of paper...which I was glad to have because after Mahal finished performing, I flipped to the next channel just as Father John Misty was beginning his performance of this week's tune on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.  Two great tunes new to me in the space of ten minutes--again, surprise and wonder, wonder and surprise...

Father John Misty (and what a great moniker that one is) was born Joshua Tillman in Rockville, Maryland and grew up in a very religious family.  After attending college for a year, he headed to the music mecca of Seattle in 2002 and began his career in earnest.  He originally performed under his given name, was in the bands Fleet Foxes and Saxon Shore, before finally settling in as Father John Misty in 2012.  He has released eight albums as Josh Tillman, four as Father John Misty, one with Fleet Foxes, and two with Saxon Shore.  He's had three top twenty albums as Father John Misty, with one of them reaching the top ten.  Tillman has also been nominated for four Grammys and won once.

"Holy Shit" (and what a great single title that one is) was not released as a single so yet again we have no shout outs for the Billboard Hot 100 this week.  It was on the 2015 LP I Love You, Honeybear which reached number 17 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard 200 chart.  Interestingly (or not) for this day and age, 30% of its sales have come in the form of the good old-fashioned LP.

"Holy Shit" was written on the day Tillman married his wife (they're still together so I'm assuming the somber tone of the song wasn't a warning shot that the marriage was doomed from the start), and it lists a litany of life's ills and emotions, as well as cultural phenomena, on its way to its chorus which basically questions what's going on in the protagonists soul as he ponders his mortality...in all honesty, I really don't know what the song is about.  But I like its anthemic nature, the way the piano and the acoustic guitar play off each other, and I like Tillman's pained yet hopeful vocals (wedding day doubts/joy?)--especially the elongated "Oh" that ends the chorus and I always imagine is probably the moment in concert when everybody in the arena is "Ohhhing" along.  I also like the way Tillman plays on the words holy shit in terms of the songs religious overtones and imagery, juxtaposing it with the surprise one usually has when those two words are uttered.  In the end, what I like most about it is that numerous listens after the first time I heard it on Colbert, I still think, "Holy shit, this is a great song..."

Lyric Sheet:  "Oh, and no one ever really knows you, and life is brief/So I've heard, but what's that gotta do with this black hole in me..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee