Religion: Love...Thy Will Be Done

Martika: Love...Thy Will Be Done

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This song blew me away the first time I heard it on the radio (though admittedly, I was only in junior high). It's beautiful, and anthemic, but yet it is pretty much a gospel song just jammed in there among the rest of the pop schlock that was being played on popular radio in 1991. The song was written and produced by the one and only Prince, and then performed by pop singer Martika, who is best known for her hit single "Toy Soldiers". "Love...Thy Will Be Done" did well commercially though, it made it into the top 10 pop charts.

To this day it remains one of my all time favorite songs because I find it so powerful...undoubtedly because of what it stands for to me. When having a religious discussion with a friend of mine and attempting to explain how I feel on the subject the only thing I could think of was this song. I told him, "as an agnostic, the one thing I feel like I can get behind without reservations is love as a religion. To me, if you can't replace the word "Lord" or "God" with "love" and still have your beliefs make sense, then you're doing something wrong". And of course, the original phrase is "Lord, thy will be done", and the song is "Love, thy will be done". Changing two letters changes everything.

1989: Toy Soldiers

Martika: Toy Soldiers

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When I first heard what the theme for the week was going to be I thought "uh oh, everyone else was probably at a more mature age than I was in 1989, and therefore had more mature taste in music", because in 1989 I was ten years old and I only listened to what was on the radio. That being said, I certainly could have picked something that I only discovered after the fact, but my 5th grade self is begging me to stay true to her first. So, one of my favorite songs of 1989 in 1989 was Martika's "Toy Soldiers".

Two of my favorite genres of music are 80s pop music, and female singer-songwriters, this song pulls both of those together, way before I ever had a sense of what it meant to be a singer-songwriter. More than anything, Martika was a power-pop vocalist, having spent her early years on the children's TV program Kids Incorporated, she was the 80s equivalent of the Disney crew these days. But at the same time, she WAS writing her own songs, and she wasn't always singing bubblegum pop. This song is about a friend's drug addiction. Of course, this was the late 80s, and the anti-drug movement was at it's peak. We were slowly seeing the emergence of pro-abstinence and anti-drug music hit the mainstream, like a radio version of an after-school special.

Over the years, I still love this song. I think it's beautiful enough to pass through the corniness of the 80s pop generation fairly unscathed. I've also always admired Martika because she sang one of my favorite songs of all time, the Prince-written "Love...Thy Will Be Done". Since her success in the late 80s and early 90s, Martika has found minor success writing and contributing backing vocals to other people's work, and finally, having "Toy Soldiers" sampled in an Eminem track a few years back.