A man with a wild, chest-length beard, wearing a sun-beaten cowboy hat and a canvas army jacket swaggers up to you on the street. He smacks you across the face, shakes your hand, identifies himself as Seattle musician Carl Christensen, and tells you to follow him to a better future. You’re angry and totally flustered, but — wooed by his charisma — you do it.
You follow Christensen into his 300 mile-per-hour new single, “Cult Leader,” in which he offers a matter-of-fact guide to building a new society in 2020. Plowing through verses in a stripped down, twangy, Ramones-like punk fashion, Christensen’s lyrics detail his journey from 20-something regular dude to spiritual figurehead. Against a manic swell of hi-hats and guitar, he excitedly paints a picture of farm-to-table meals, morning yoga, and purely blissful belonging. As a garage orchestra and Christensen’s vocals build at the end of each bridge, you can hear his cult’s enrollment piling up.
But much like history’s most famous cults, the song’s glittery, idyllic beginnings turn the corner into something much different. The seemingly satirical tale becomes a back-handed critique as the U.S. military seeks his advice on recruiting the aimless and naive. Christensen instructs a nameless military official that a leader can arm any cause with a promise of purpose to the purposeless: “It’s not complex I’m sure you’ll agree / Nobody’s problems in life are really all that unique.”
While the first half of the track pulls you in with folksy, narrative lyricism and a snappy tempo, the second half sucker-punches with this deviously intelligent plot twist. “Cult Leader” doesn’t hesitate — instrumentally or emotionally — to manipulate listeners into heavy territory, arguing that patriotic warfare thrives on citizens’s voids of purpose and leaving us with a playfully-suggested tie between the kind of persuasion that allows televangelists and death cult leaders alike to do what they do and the systems of our own government.
All in all, Christensen’s “Cult Leader” is a case study of power dynamics that’s detached from reality just enough to have fun debating it while still making you forever skeptical of solicitors with clipboards. Take a listen below to decide whether you’d sign on the dotted line.
*We give this track a 5/10 for moral compass
Thank you guys so much! I genuinely laughed out loud multiple times while reading this! Your kind words are deeply appreciated
Thank you guys! y’all are so kind! I genuinely laughed out loud when I read the first paragraph! Your kind words a very very appreciated! (honestly 5/10 on moral compass feels high)