Electric guitar with the reverb amped up, pounding drums, a moody rolling synth line, and fake trumpets interspersed throughout – could anything be more papal?
The Vatican seems not to think so, putting its new single of Pope Francis-sampled pop rock online as a free download, and making orders available for an entire album on iTunes.
A collaboration with European record label Believe Digital, the record features pop rock riffs mixed in with excerpts of Pope Francis’s speeches and hymns in several languages, according to Rolling Stone, which first announced the album and interviewed one of the composers behind it.
In the record’s eponymous single, Wake Up!, Francis shouts in his quiet way, “Wake up! Go! Go! Forward!” at a South Korean audience, and mutters: “It is a duty to be vigilant, not to allow the pressures, the temptations and the sins to dull our sensibility of the beauty of holiness.”
Tony Pagliuca, an Italian keyboard player who helped compose the album, told Rolling Stone that after touring with prog-rock band Le Orme in the 1970s, he “also made an important journey of faith”.
“Putting my music in the service of the words and the voice of Pope Francis has been a fantastic experience and a very interesting artistic challenge,” he told the magazine. If you’re eager to know yet more about the pope’s first ever Christian rock-ish album, enjoy the tracklist and streaming single below.
1. “Annuntio Vobis Gaudium Magnum”
2. “Salve Regina”
3. “Cuidar el Planeta”
4. “Por Qué Sufren Los Niños”
5. “Non Lasciatevi Rubare La Speranza!”
6. “La Iglesia No Puede Ser Una ONG!”
7. “Wake Up! Go! Go! Forward!”
8. “La Fe Es Entera, No Se Licua!”
9. “Pace! Fratelli!”
10. “Santa Famiglia de Nazareth”
11. “Fazei O Que Ele Vos Disser”
