The Singing Nun: "Dominique"

December 2, 1963 (4 weeks)

As I just said in my review of Cliff Richard's "It's All in the Game", picking on religious music is the low hanging fruit. I understand the impulse and I'm not above doing so myself, especially back when I was younger, but there's nothing challenging about it and you'll never get anywhere trying to take it down. Contemporary Christian Music — or CCM for short — can exist in its own little bubble for all I care. When us secular types rail against the pious not being able to keep their noses out of affairs that they have nothing to do with we should at least be gracious enough to admit that they've kept the bulk of the shit they listen to to themselves. What more can we ask for?

"Dominique" became a huge hit in North America in the weeks following the stunning assassination of American President John F. Kennedy. While there's a good argument to be made that this inoffensive (and, frankly, unintelligable to most listeners on the west side of the Atlantic) record may have helped sooth a nation that had been rocked to its core, it's also worth noting that JFK was a Catholic so it may have been taken as an unintended tribute. And, to be sure, a number of people who bought it and/or attempted to singalong with it would not have been followers of the Pope. Whatsmore, not all Catholics were convinced: in Ireland, it could do no better than a peak of number three. (Gosh, it's as if human beings are complex creatures or something)

The heartbreaking story of how The Singing Nun (aka, Soeur Sourire, aka, Jeannine Deckers) hardly made a cent out of her million-selling smash while then being hit with a massive back tax bill by the Belgian government ought to give her bonus points but I'm not going to do so. Sorry, but spending the next twenty years of her life in misery does not make "Dominique" any more bearable. I mean, it isn't unbearable as such. It's the kind of thing to have on and scarcely notice — until it begins to grate. Though it clocks in at just under three minutes, the chorus is trotted out a labourious eight times and it's almost as if the mandate was to get through the verses about Saint Dominic's life as swiftly as possible so that they could get right back to their money shot. There's no bridge, no instrumental break and nothing in its final seconds that's any different from its opening. If you've listened to its first fifteen seconds then you've effectively heard the whole thing.

Paying tribute to a patron saint who sacrificed himself in service to his Lord is commendable. But going through tough times of her own proved to be too much for Deckers to deal with. There's a lesson in there somewhere but I'm not at all qualified to speculate as to what it might be. Maybe it's just that it's far easier to pay homage to a great figure from mythology than to live the sort of life he had. It's not unlike how as fans we don't want our favourites to sell out to commercialism while we fail to consider how we would react in a similar situation. I don't know. In short, The Singing Nun's life sucked and people far shittier than her profited off of "Dominique". I'd be more sympathetic but for a nagging question: what did she honestly expect?

Score: 3