We just last month discussed the 1995 video for “Just” by Radiohead. We had noted in passing that there is easily an alternate history wherein The Bends-era Radiohead goes on to become the same sort of Pop-Rock Brits as Coldplay would half a decade later; indeed, in 2008, Mr. “Uptown Funk” himself Mark Ronson proved that thesis right by recording a Funk cover of “Just,” with those one-hit Californians Phantom Planet as back-up.^[1]There is even a certain class of Zillennials who know the Ronson version of “Just” better than their Xillennial older siblings–though boy, ain’t that a mouthful? I feel dumber … Continue reading Without a single lyric or chord change, Ronson somehow transforms a song of anxiety and paranoia into a feel-good dance-anthem.

The accompanying video plays cheeky homage to the original, by once again featuring the band in a London flat jamming out, while a bunch of pedestrians in business dress are laid out on the street below. A dustman approaches with the weariness of a bloke who has to deal with this on the reg. “Why are you on the ground?” he asks in subtitles that are even in the same font to the original–and at last we have a clear answer! “We’re in a Mark Ronson video, go away,” a business-suited man on the ground says as curtly as the original. When the dustman asks if “This is all symbolic, innit?”, the lead pedestrian says no, he just lost his trumpet. The dustman gets out his broom to brush them away, pausing only to yell up at the upper-story window, “And try writing your own songs, will ya?”

But unlike the Radiohead original, we finally get some resolution; for rather than just sweep the people on the sidewalk away, the dustman instead gets the bright idea to lay down a trumpet on the ground by the front pedestrian, and in short order they all rise back to their feet and dance to the trumpet and that Funky rhythm. The dead have returned to life, and perform their joyous tunes of praise! Like David of old, they dance before the Lord with all their might.

Is this all a little irreverent for Easter morning, the holiest day of the Christian calendar? Well, as no less than G.K. Chesterton wrote at the end of (I think) Orthodoxy^[2]Either that or Heretics, if there is one attribute of the Savior that is perhaps understated by the Four Gospels, it is His keen sense of mirth. One day long after the Resurrection, somewhere in the distant Eternities, we will all look back at all our pains and sufferings of this sordid life and veil of tears and even the awful mystery of death itself, and treat it all as one big joke, as perhaps it always has been.

Now, we have not resurrected yet; we do not mean in the slightest to invalidate the immense pain and grief we are forced to suffer in this life (trust us on this one), which per Brigham Young is as important as any other in Eternity. We have also discussed before how Funk is as much about turning a party into a funeral as turning a funeral into a party^[3]The Mark Ronson version was recorded at the height of the Iraq War and the eve of the Great Recession, mind you; there is a reason why our baptismal covenants admonish us to mourn with those that mourn, for this world is full of mourning indeed. It is completely valid to lean more towards Radiohead than Mark Ronson in how you react against the gross injustice of this wicked and fallen world.

But at least on Easter morning, if none other, we can still look forward to the time when we will share with Christ Almighty in his endless mirth, as He raises of forth from the dead with a wink and laugh, and the Savior will wipe away all tears from our eyes^[4]Revelations 21:4–