Shortly after last week’s blog posts went up, including a Currently Watching featuring Super Bowl Commercials I wrote, Ad Council released a Valentine’s Day Ad celebrating all forms of love.
As I was watching, I was struck by the beauty of the song in the background. The commercial uses “Show Me Love (Skrillex Remix) ft. Chance The Rapper” by Hundred Waters (click here to listen to in full). However, there is a longer acoustic version of the chilling chorus sampled in this song in “Show Me Love” by Hundred Waters.
As a product of the Catholic School system, I was immediately struck by the similarities between this song and a hymn we used to sing.
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“Show Me Love” Hundred Waters |
“Make Me a Channel of Your Peace”
Adaption of the Prayer of St. Francis Sebastian Temple |
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Don’t let me show cruelty Show me love Don’t let me think weakly Show me love |
Make me a channel of your peace Where there is hatred let me bring your love Where there is injury, your pardon Lord And where there is doubt true faith in YouMake me a channel of your peace Where there is despair in life let me bring hope Where there is darkness only light And where there’s sadness ever joyOh, Master grant that I may never seek So much to be consoled as to console To be understood as to understand To be loved as to love with all my soulMake me a channel of your peace It is in pardoning that we are pardoned It is in giving to all man that we receive And in dying that we are born to eternal life |
I don’t think Hundred Waters’s song is meant to be religious. In fact, the line “And don’t let me think too long of the one I’m bound to face” could even be interpreted as a call to forget about religion. However, “Show Me Love” does seem to be making an appeal to the universe very similarly to the way St. Francis appealed to his God.
Besides the religious or secular associations with these two songs, there are other obvious differences between the pieces. For example, while The Prayer of St. Francis focuses on being a figure of good for others, “Show Me Love” reflects a drive for self improvement; instead of St. Francis’s plea to bring love to others who hate, Hundred Waters advocates for the acknowledgement of an individual’s own capacity to hate and striving to not show that hatred to others.
Despite these differences, at the core of both pieces, there is a drive to be better people. Though Hundred Waters’s “Show Me Love” was originally released in 2014, I do not think this song could be getting popularized at a better time. Collectively, we all need to remember our own ability to do bad, and choose to do good anyway. Humans have come a long way, but it is vital to remember that this message is just as relevant in the 21st century as it was in the 12th.
Margaret Iuni
The Junction Journal 