If you’re not familiar with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, he’s probably best known for songs about murder (Where the Wild Roses Go, Stagger Lee, Henry Lee) or apocalyptic situations (Red Right Hand). The murder is often related to sex, by the way. Which makes it especially interesting that Nick Cave also wrote this song:

It sounds like a love song and is, but it’s a love song to God.

Nick Cave isn’t much of a believer—according to his wikipedia page he said in an interview:

I’m not religious, and I’m not a Christian, but I do reserve the right to believe in the possibility of a god. It’s kind of defending the indefensible, though; I’m critical of what religions are becoming, the more destructive they’re becoming. But I think as an artist, particularly, it’s a necessary part of what I do, that there is some divine element going on within my songs.

Oh, those nasty religions which insist that people should be good instead of just giving into every impulse that they have, and that they have a nature and can’t be anything that they want. They’re so mean with the way that they get in the way of everyone’s fun. But Nick Cave has a career in entertainment to think of and most entertainers are degenerates of one kind or another and degenerates crave little as much as they do affirmation. But when it comes to a songwriter, look to his songs, not to his interviews.

And in his songs we find a love song to God.