Mona Lisa

I have been marveling at the new Wishy song "Mona Lisa" and the band's ability to fit musical references to both the Velvet Underground and a Sunday School staple in a single tune. I knew that the VU reference (to the song "Femme Fatale") was intentional, but I wasn't totally sure about the music from "I've Got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy (Down In My Heart)" Could it have just been a coincidence?

Well, I'm kind of a dummy, and of course it wasn't a coincidence, as Hayden Merrick points out in a review of the new Wishy album Nature's Pill.

It’s not a coincidence that Wishy interpolate both “Femme Fatale” by the Velvet Underground and a Bible class singalong within the same track. They never sing the actual words to “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, down in my heart”—that Sunday school staple you may know from The Simpsons—but the sentiment is heavily implied when the melody tumbles over the outro of “Mona Lisa.” Nature’s Pill, Wishy’s second album, is all about love’s dangerous intoxication (fatale of course meaning deadly) and how, when it goes south, you’ve got everything you need within yourself. The track’s final lyric: “Still life so incomplete now / I’m filling it out myself.” Another case in point, from the record’s closing moments: “Heaven is a state of mind.”

I feel I need to point out that I wasn't familiar with the Bible class standard from The Simpsons. I was familiar with it from, you know, going to church. I guess that's not a reference point most of the heathen readers would get.