CBS Late Night Spotlights Strident Iconoclast Alternative Rock Singer

CBS' The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson recently gave alternative rock singer Kristeen Young her American network television debut singing "Pearl of a Girl".

For those who found Young's singing to be more discordant disharmony rather than what NPR shills as "beguiling and visceral" singing, here are the lyrics to "Pearl of a Girl":

I never knew I was a girl until they stopped to tell me. 

I never knew I was disturbed until they dropped three volumes on me.

But in the Bible/Torah/Quran there are really no good roles for me except concubine and wash woman.

I used to be the sad one now I just want to stab them it's so severe, it's brutal.

They've needed to have the law so they can legally bind us.

They've needed the church so they can morally ground us.

They've needed to make the dough they've must be so scared of us.

So their stories are of ghosts.

I only wish the virgin would've had an abortion.

 Young's iconoclastic lyrics sought to condemn all major religions for centuries of religious persecution and keeping women in subservient roles.  Yet fashion and imaging for "The Knife Shift" goes out of its way to insult all of the Abrahamic faiths. And she does the Knife Shift to suggest that the Virgin Mary should have aborted the Christ child. 

For example, Young prides herself on creating her own fashion.  Young proudly describes a skirt that she designed which she painted on symbols of the three major religions which she intentionally defaced.  The cross and the crescent moon were positioned upside down and the Stars of David looked like it was a shirukin throwing stars.  

The iconoclast artist also claimed: "I feel like making and wearing something Satanic". This provocative fashion and lyric is a marked contrast to her avowed approach to art "the freedom and diversity of many styles grouped together".  Young not only felt compelled to shout her song from the rooftop but to insult all with whom she disagrees. So much for coexist. 


"The Pearl of a Girl" was not the 37 year old strident chanteuse's first foray into what charitably can be seen as clashing with religious and cultural constraints. In her six album discography, her tracks include "No Other God", "Commit Adultery", "Devil Girl", "The Devil Made Me", "Son of Man",  and "Protestant".  Somehow, it seems unlikely that one would hear tracks from "Music for Strippers, Hookers and the Odd On-Looker" (2009) on  a Praise music channel. 

Some interviews with Kristeen Young intimate a woman who was troubled by her youth in St. Louis where she struggled with religion and non-conformity.  But instead of fashioning these inclinations like Madonna, they manifested themselves like her estwhile mentor Morrissey with a panache of Lady Gaga.

It is not uncommon for rock musicians to push the envelope of taste and engage in épater le bourgeois.  After all, a famous Rolling Stones song is "Sympathy for the Devil" (1968) which attributes the tumult of the 1960s to the hellish anti-hero.  In addition, the Rolling Stones also issued a record: "Their Satantic Majestic Request" (1967), which was their only attempt at psychodelia.  Mick Jagger summed it up best: 

 "There's a lot of rubbish on Satanic Majesties. Just too much time on our hands, too many drugs, no producer to tell us, 'Enough already, thank you very much, now can we get just get on with this song?'"

Rather than adopt a anti-hero narrative or compose a session stoned, Kristeen Young consistently follows a world view that it ardently iconoclastic and anti-religious as most people of faith would understand it.

So why give Young the publicity which she cravenly covets?  It shows how CBS has stooped to conquer. When The Doors appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1967, they were asked to change the Robbie Krieger lyrics to "Light My Fire" so as not to sing "Girl we could get much higher".  Of course, Jim Morrison flouted this promise and The Doors got banned.  That same year, the Rolling Stones--the bad boys of rock and roll--changed the lyrics to a popular song to "Let's spend some time together" to not scandalize audiences.   

The CBS "Pearl of a Girl" spot exemplifies the mainstreaming of alternative lifestyles which the great silent majority finds alien and mildly offensive. This is a nation which is tolerant of a wide variety of views and lifestyles, but the Lamestream Media and the cultural intelligentsia is pushing a weltanschauung which excludes all but the politically correct perspective of the moment.   The episode underlines why Christians feel like they are under attack, albeit in this instance culturally. To change this cultural assault, the faithful must recognize the challenge in order to peacefully confront challenges. 

Considering his choice in guests, it is no wonder why Craig Ferguson was not fingered to be David Letterman's replacement.