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“Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” – The Vaselines
(Words/music: Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee, available on The Way of the Vaselines: A Complete History, Sub Pop 1992)

I feel guilty starting this entry with a reference to Nirvana, but without Kurt Cobain’s repeated championing of the Vaselines, most of the world would not know them.  It makes sense that Cobain would be a fan, as the Vaselines shared the same love of wry, sometimes noisy pop music that Cobain rode to fame.  Throughout The Way of the Vaselines (which is being rereleased as Enter the Vaselines in May), Kelly and McKee explore some strange sounds (the bike horn on “Molly’s Lips” being one of my favorites) yet always retain a sense of song structure.  It made sense that Nirvana would cover some of these songs on early singles and perform them faithfully (although, they played them a bit louder).  Still, it’s “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam” from the MTV Unplugged in New York that pays the most loving homage to the band.  The Unplugged performance contained a lot of off beat covers (including a mini Meat Puppets’ set with actual members of the band performing with Nirvana), but it’s the Vaselines song and Cobain’s matter-of-fact introduction that stands out as a moment of pure reverence to a song (and band) that he admired.

The Nirvana version does the original (which the Vaselines would later rename to add in the “doesn’t” from the song’s first line), especially the string melody recreated by Krist Novoselic’s accordion.  The song, a parody of a children’s hymn, skillfully toes the line between poking fun at the original and standing on its own.  Even without knowing the original hymn, the song stands as an ode to being imperfect.  The narrator accepts his shortcomings and acknowledges that he’s not “sunbeam” material, yet he refuses pity.  While the song feels a little sad, I’ve always heard the chorus as a frank acceptance of the narrators’ imperfections, preferring to be taken as is rather than pitied for being flawed.  It’s the kind of song, one composed by a couple of melodically inclined outsiders, that Cobain, the quintessential outsider, would be drawn to, and it probably explains why he produces such a stirring performance.

More on The Vaselines: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm