Revival Music

You know how you just get a song in your head and can't get it out?

This week it's been Melissa Etheridge's Oscar-winning, anthemic "I Need To Wake Up," from the film An Inconvenient Truth. The song is on a best-of anthology that we've been playing in the Jeep, and for some reason it is speaking to me powerfully, about all the contexts of my life. I am not a "revival" person by any means, but if I had to go to one I'd take my fingers out of my ears if they played "I Need to Wake Up" as the come-to-Jesus song. (Yeah...that'll happen.)

I'd love to embed a YouTube clip with "I Need to Wake Up" as a soundtrack on our church website, but the accompanying videos are either really cheesy or direct shots from An Inconvenient Truth, which I'm sure would open an unpleasant can of politicized worms among our parishoners. Actually, one of the better YouTube films is of a middle-school band playing its version of the song; I wish the sound quality were better, but even in this version the kids rock:



And for those of you not familiar with the lyrics:

Have I been sleeping?
I’ve been so still
Afraid of crumbling
Have I been careless?
Dismissing all the distant rumblings
Take me where I am supposed to be
To comprehend the things that I can’t see

Cause I need to move
I need to wake up
I need to change
I need to shake up
I need to speak out
Something’s got to break up
I’ve been asleep
And I need to wake up
Now

And as a child
I danced like it was 1999
My dreams were wild
The promise of this new world
Would be mine
Now I am throwing off the carelessness of youth
To listen to an inconvenient truth

That I need to move
I need to wake up
I need to change
I need to shake up
I need to speak out
Something’s got to break up
I’ve been asleep
And I need to wake up
Now

I am not an island
I am not alone
I am my intentions
Trapped here in this flesh and bone

And I need to move
I need to wake up
I need to change
I need to shake up
I need to speak out
Something’s got to break up
I’ve been asleep
And I need to wake up
Now