Psalm

This song is blatantly ironic!

This always seemed obviously ironic to me, not only because of the lyrics, or because Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music as a whole is usually ironic about anything, but also Ferry's voice and expression while singing it. but I came across many people that called this a "truly spiritual piece".

I will explain my analysis:

--- Try on your love like a new dress; The fit and the cut, your friends to impress ---

Love treated as something shallow. Love is but an appearance one might keep. As the song goes on, expressions are referred to as a shell, as pure appearance as well. "Wear" kind faces and they might send kindness to you in return. Try out your god. The statement means: Try any god, and hope this god will send kindness from strangers. This is a contradiction and an ironic statement. If kindness should come from those strangers, it isn't under the power of that god. The god's coat is another allusion to the leather, the shell, the outer instead of the inner.

"Believe in me" - The narrator was one to trust in the past, before Jesus belief came in between. Now, with 'head in the clouds', the one with which he's talking to is trying to see "The Lord", but fails to do so.

What is to come then are random expressions of overdramatic adoration towards that god. I find funny the way Bryan says pa-ra-dise. It is very enphatic and satiric.

That first half of the song is enough to see Bryan's cynical approach of religion in this song, and also enough to intuit that all super dramatic religious admiration is a satire.

If Bryan has a spiritual side nowadays, he was a nihilist atheist back then while writing this song, which is highly anti-religious. Or maybe it's a satire of the religious institution and its followers.