Sun Ra – ‘El Is a Sound of Joy’

It’s hard picking a specific song of Sun Ra’s that points to his belief in a higher power, as the truth is, his entire discography was dedicated towards something otherworldly. He believed that he had been sent from space by aliens in a bid to connect Earth with the wider universe through the power of music. As such, all of his songs are somewhat inspired by something bigger than himself, but one of his greatest examples as such is ‘El Is a Sound of Joy’.

“You got to be ready when you play with this band…when the harmonies move in a direction that they seemingly are not supposed to move in and still fit, you got another message from another realm from somebody else, and superior beings would definitely speak in other harmonic ways because they’re talking to something different,” he said when speaking to Ahmed Abdullah, who would eventually become his trumpeter.

“You have to have chord against chord, melody against melody, and rhythm against rhythm. When you have that, you’re experiencing something else.”

Prince – ‘Let’s Go Crazy’

Prince had always shown an unshakeable belief in God throughout his career, but there was a song that he felt such a connection with, it was as though it was a gift from god in itself. Released in 1984, the song ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ featured a line from a sermon and allowed Prince to feel a genuine connection with a higher power.

“‘Let’s Go Crazy’ was God to me,” said Prince, “It was: Stay happy, stay focused, and you can beat the elevator. Are we gonna let the elevator bring us down? Oh no, let’s go!”

David Bowie – ‘Silly Boy Blue’

There is a parallel universe out there where David Bowie never became a musician at all, but instead became a monk. His song ‘Silly Boy Blue’, released in 1965, tells the story of a day when he travelled to a local Buddhist Society and considered joining. In the end, he wound up leaving and committing to music, but if the monk he met on that fateful day had worded things differently, then maybe this world would have been drastically altered.

“I stumbled into the Buddhist Society in London when I was about 17,” he recalled, “Sitting in front of me at the desk was a Tibetan lama, and he looked up, and he said, ‘Are you looking for me?’ He had a bad grasp of English and, in fact, was saying, ‘Who are you looking for?’ But I needed him to say, ‘You’re looking for me’.”

Bob Dylan – ‘Let Me Rest on That Peaceful Mountain’

Bob Dylan went through an incredibly religious phase during his career. He admitted that he saw God almost everywhere he turned, whether it was in flowers, in the weather, in animals; the face of the divine was plastered in everything. However, he heard it the most in some of the songs he had become obsessed with, and one of these was ‘Let Me Rest on That Peaceful Mountain’, a track which he called the foundation of his beliefs.

“All my beliefs come out of those old songs, literally, anything from ‘Let Me Rest on That Peaceful Mountain’ to ‘Keep on the Sunny Side’,” he said, “I believe in a God of time and space, but if people ask me about that, my impulse is to point them back toward those songs.”

Marvin Gaye – ‘Rhapsody in Blue’

If you’re ever looking for true feeling and emotion in music, you can hear it in the likes of Marvin Gaye and his sweet soulful vocals. However, Gaye’s go-to for raw-sounding emotion and beauty comes from music a lot earlier than that. He spoke highly of Gershwin and the song ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, a song that packs so much feeling that he can’t help but think that it came from God.

“I cry when I hear some of Gershwin,” he said, “I know the guy really felt it when he wrote it. It wasn’t his hand that did it; it was God’s hand, and it was written for him, and I’m under the impression I’m gonna do something like that.”