Steely Dan: Godwhacker Meaning
Godwhacker Lyrics
We could hang with the dude
But it's been too much of nothing
Of that stank attitude
Now they curse your name
And there's a bounty on your face
It's your own fault daddy
Godwhacker's on the case
We track your almighty...
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1TOP RATED
#1 top rated interpretation:Ok, guys, this is kinda simple. It's kinda silly but fun song about a man who goes to kill god. I would say the best way to describe it is a deicidal version of "Shaft." It could be sung initially by jesus because it refers to god as father, but since the idea is he's everyone's father that's only conjecture. Mainly, it's about a man who thinks god has to pay for crimes and is going to kill him, presumably with a bladed weapon of some sort.
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God Wacker ... G. W. ... George Walker Bush. It's about 9-11 and Bin Ladin.
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I think people are reading too much into this.I view it as a song about a kingpin on the street who is about to get done in by hit men--(Me), Slinky Redfoot and their trusted Angel Girls.
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This was in fact written very soon after Donald's mother tragically died of Altzheimer's.
As I understand it,this song was his response to the injustice of a Divinity who could allow such things to happen. -
Obviously a song about a crew killing god for all the horrors he's inflicted, Fagen says as much in his recent book. One more reason to worship (ha!) D.F&W.B.
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Any idea why some lyrics were taken from a 1979 song, 'Lone Ranger'?
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It's a song about George W. Bush... seriously!
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it is about the now defunct Bin laden and the Bushes.
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I think the Godwhacker is a typical atheist. I am a secular humanist--an atheist with a rich philosophy--and I see a lot atheists spending lots of time dwelling on the absurdity of the idea of gods. There are also lots of ways that society is harmed by theism, especially the right wing bozos that are trying to take over society in much the same way they had control for lots of centuries. Many atheists spend a lot of time taking cheap shots at the fundamentalists and other theists, but they don't spend much time trying to build something better.
Of course, I'm not going to bet the farm on my hypothesis, because Steely Dan is famously difficult to pin down. They might be talking about something that I could have no idea about. I had no idea until recently that the song Barrytown was about Scientologists. That puts me nearly 40 years late. It was only a chance discovery that put me on to that--if it's true--and so Godwhacker could be similarly obscure. -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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the album Everything Must Go has a couple other songs that indicate resignation and disllusionment: The Last Mall and Everything Must Go - Godwhacker seems to be in the same vein, except cosmic: a reference to Blake's "Tyger, tyger, burning bright" in particular -- the song seems to be about rejection of all religions, the secularization of Western civilization, the turning away from God as all-knowing sky-father, after a century of cataclysmic war - how can there be a God if Hitler murdered so many Jews, if the Civil War took so long to decide (wasn't one side in the right?) - so, to hell with God. See also Deus by the Sugarcubes and Burning Hell by John Lee Hooker for similar song emphasis. I don't see anything about Bush and Obama in those lyrics at all, though one could overlay that meaning if one tried - but Steely dan usually has specific if oblique references to real events or traits, and Bush doesn't show up in the song at all as far as I can see...
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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