We’ve written about Ron Pope’s most recent album ‘American Man, American Music’ but this new single is not taken from that release. It stands alone as a testament to Pope’s antipathy to…TikTok. That surprised you. Bet you thought it’d be a song about how many people claim to cleave to the teaching of the Nazarene and yet go through life being absolutely awful to everybody they meet. Well, surprise – it is. Here’s how we bring this paradox into crystalline clarity. Or, more accurately, here’s how Pope explains what’s going on here, as he states that: “The New Testament is pretty big on kindness, there’s lots of talk about compassion and sharing. Throughout history, people have warped scripture to justify their own lack of empathy. I’ve always been revolted by that practice. I don’t know why it happened on this particular day, but one morning very recently, the anti-empathy TikTok video that broke the camel’s back appeared on my screen, and I said, ‘Enough!’ That’s where ‘Things Jesus Didn’t Say’ came from. I wrote it in our basement at 6 am (quietly, trying not to wake up my family) and by 9:30, I’d recorded a little live video in my backyard and released it.”
This rapidly written song and subsequent video connected with a lot of people – it’s picked up 1.9million views, and if they aren’t all single unique viewings then that’s still going to be a lot of people which gave Ron Pope a necessary injection of hope “I was worried that I would make people angry, but mostly, I’ve found lots of like-minded folks who believe in leading with compassion. The fervour surrounding this tune before its official release has really raised my spirits and given me hope. What a strange time to be alive.”
