• Last Update 2024-08-28 14:34:00

Pope Francis has a new album coming in November

World

On Nov. 27, Pope Francis will release “Wake Up!” a collection of his speeches set to music. While much has been made of Francis’ dropping a prog-rock album, that’s not entirely the case, according to Al Jazeera. [caption id="attachment_51410" align="alignright" width="350"]pope Pope Francis[/caption] Producer and musical director Don Giulio Neroni told Rolling Stone that in making the album, he tried to be “strongly faithful” to the personality of His Holiness, “the pope of dialogue, open doors, hospitality.” Lest there be any confusion, the pontiff does not sing or play an instrument on “Wake Up!” His presence is confined to recorded excerpts of his public (and rapturously received) speeches. Much of the music is arranged to support these spoken word passages, and it aspires to be appropriately immense. At times, the sweep and simplicity of “Wake Up!” makes it resemble the soundtrack to “Titanic.” Only one song could be called prog-rock, and in saying that, I’m so sorry to disappoint.
Francis uses many languages to communicate his message. “Wake Up!” features only one piece in English. The rest are in Latin, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. In each we hear a righteous man, confident with the masses, affable and yet authoritative in his delivery. There can be no doubt that his various messages — about environmentalism, faith, equality and compassion — are sincerely held and movingly delivered. His record, however, doesn’t come across so successfully, the report said. “Wake Up!” is a musical vehicle with two speeds. The first is an instrumental soundtrack for the pontiff’s spoken words. The other is a collection of songs, written about and recorded around more of his homilies. What they have in common, generally, is the accessibility and blandness of a waiting room. Most of the instruments, including the many cinematic cymbal rolls, are synthesized. This is probably because the project might not have had the budget for full orchestration. There have been other papal albums: 1979’s “Pope John Paul II Sings at the Festival of Sacrosong,” 1994’s “El Rosario del Papa” and 1999’s “Abba Pater.” The most recent (despite not featuring any Abba songs) sold the best but was hardly considered a hit.

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