Eulogy and Light

Title of song: Eulogy and Light

Artist: Funkadelic

Album: Free Your Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow

Year of first release: 1971

The music behind it is from ''Open Our Eyes" (Funkadelic, 1967), played backwards.

Songwriter: Ernie Harris

Memorable Lyrics:

• "Our father/Which art on Wall Street/Honored be thy buck"
• "From every head and ass, may dollars flow"
• "Forgive us our goofs/As we rob from each other"
• "He maketh me to sell dope to small children/For thou art evil"
• "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of poverty/I must feel their envy/For I am loaded, high and all those other goodies/That go along with the good god big buck"
• "And as I rise/The cries of kittens, gray, make way/For there, now near/Here now, gone, alone"
• "I scream, silent comforts that are not heard"
• "Is truth the light?"

Complete lyrics at the Motherpage

The lyrics are rapped and backmasked, a remade version of the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm. When "Maggot Brain" is performed live, the words to Eulogy and Light are sometimes used as an introduction.

"Eulogy and Light" subverts Christian themes, indicting modern organized Christianity for becoming consumerist and materialistic. Many of the lines are, especially in context as parodies of the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm, are accusatory, directed towards hypocrites would pray and still commit acts of cruelty and insenstivity.

Personnel

Vocals: George Clinton