Okay, hear me out on this one. The song The Sign by Swedish band Ace of Base is totally about Satanism, or some kind of dark religion. It's obvious if you just think about it, but I'll still go over it with you. Let's take a look at the lyrics to start with (I got these lyrics from Genius). Please keep in mind that this post is not an endorsement of Satanism.
CW for white supremacy
The introduction:
Whoa, oh, yeah
So the very first thing we hear from the singers is a vocalization to summon the dark lord. Satan doesn't communicate with just words (though he does understand every human language as well as some non-human ones) so to awaken Satan and bring him to the earthly realm, one must convey their motives through emotional vocalizations that will reach him.
The first lines:
(Ah) I gotta new life
You would hardly recognize me I'm so glad
We are introduced to the speaker of the song. She tells us that she has a 'new life', which means that she has just been initiated into the cult of the devil and has been 'reborn' in a dark baptism. She has become a totally different person from the experience and is reveling in her newfound servitude to Satan.
Continuing:
How could a person like me care for you?
(Ah) Why do I bother
When you're not the one for me
Ooh, is enough, enough?
She is looking back at her old life before initiation and wondering how she ever put up with it. She is addressing a 'you' in the song, but who is this mysterious person... or being? On a surface level, it might seem like she is addressing a former lover- and this might be the case- but she also could possibly be addressing God, or maybe Jesus Christ or simply some higher being that contrasts with the dark being she now has pledged allegiance to. If she is addressing a former lover, then it seems that they haven't joined her in Satanism and stayed with their God. She realizes that God/her lover are not the key to happiness and she has had 'enough' of this life, which is what leads her to Satanism.
The chorus:
I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes
I saw the sign
Life is demanding without understanding
I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes
I saw the sign
No one's gonna drag you up to get you into the light where you belong...
But where do you belong?
Just what was the sign she saw? Possibly a sign that she and her lover were no longer right for each other. Possibly a sign that introduced her to the sinister mysteries of Satanism. The line 'life is demanding without understanding' has a double meaning. The first is that life is difficult and doesn't understand humanity's struggles. Human lives are filled with hardships and no reprieve. The other meaning is that if you don't have an understanding of how life and the universe works, then life will be difficult for you. With the first meaning, the speaker is struggling with the difficulties of life and is dissatisfied with God. With the second meaning, the speaker realizes that she can make life easier if she somehow gains an understanding of it. She sees a 'sign' and learns that she can gain this understanding by giving her self to Satan. The lyrics don't indicate just exactly what this sign is (and I think it's partly metaphorical), but we will take a look at it when discussing the album art and music video in a bit. Then there's the line about how 'no one's gonna drag you up to get you into the light where you belong'. Now, we usually associate light with heaven, God, and all things good and holy. However, the true name of Satan is Lucifer- which means both 'morning star' and 'light bringer'. Ironically, the Prince of Darkness himself is a being of light. The speaker tells the listener that they too can belong to Lucifer, but that they must willingly give themselves to him. She leaves the chorus asking the audience this simple question: where do you belong? She is urging the listener to question their lives of suffering under God and possibly to think about dedicating their lives to serving Satan.
The second verse:
(Ah) Under the pale moon
For so many years I've wondered who you are
How could a person like you bring me joy?
Under the pale moon
Where I see a lot of stars
Ooh is enough, enough?
The speaker sets the scene and brings us to night where she is lost in thought under the watchful eye of the moon. The nighttime is significant because between 3am to 4am is what is known as 'the Devil's hour' or sometimes as 'the witching hour'. This hour belongs to Satan because there is an absence of Christian prayers at this time of night. It would make sense for the speaker to question her devotion to God at what is possibly this time. She says that she's often 'wondered who you are', i.e. she wonders who exactly is God and 'how could a person like [him] bring [her] joy' when life is so full of suffering. She looks again at the pale moon and sees 'a lot of stars'. If you paid attention to the previous paragraph, you'll remember that Lucifer can also mean 'morning star'. It is the Devil's hour, which is super early in the morning, and sees stars i.e. morning stars. Here she has seen a metaphorical sign and has made up her mind to give herself to Satan.
For the next parts, she vocalizes 'oh' a bit more and then sings:
I saw the sign and it opened up my mind!
And I am happy now living without you
I've left you, oh-oh-OH!
I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes I saw the sign
No one's gonna drag you up to get into the light where you belong
She then repeats the line 'I saw the sign' as the song is ending, leaving us on the final line of 'and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign!'
Here, the singer is reveling in her newfound life. She is happy to have left God or her Christian lover and is living it up in Satanism. The repetition of 'oh-oh-oh' represents an orgasm as she metaphorically gives her body to (has sex with) Satan to seal the pact. She repeats how she saw the sign and urges the others to give themselves to Satan as well, the repetition representing a grand celebration.
So, those lyrics were straightforward enough, let's take a look at the album art.
The first thing you no doubt notice- what is that symbol in the pupil of the eye? It's an ankh with a djed inside it. Let's take a closer look at these two symbols (I'm getting all this information from wikipedia).
The ankh is an ancient Egyptian symbol representing life, and in extension also representing air and water. Ancient Egyptian gods were often seen holding ankhs to symbolize their life-giving power. Moreover, ancient Egyptians believed that life was cyclical, like the setting and rising of the sun, the flooding of the Nile, the renewal of life after death. The ankh was eventually incorporated into Christian symbolism where it became the crux ansata, however the loop at the top became more circular. In the modern world, the ankh is sometimes used to represent African cultural heritage, as well as being a popular symbol amongst goths because I guess it was in some vampire movie in the 80s or whatever.
Let's talk about the djed now. The djed is another ancient Egyptian symbol, representing stability and is associated with the god of the dead and the underworld, Osiris. According to myth, Osiris was killed by the desert god Set by being tricked into a coffin where a tree grew around it and trapped Osiris in there and then a king took the tree and turned it into a pillar. Eventually, Osiris' wife Isis cut him out of the pillar and then consecrated it and it became the djed. So, like the ankh, the djed has connotations of renewal and rebirth. Also somehow it represents Osiris' spine, I don't get how when it's also the pillar he was cut out of? Whatever, not the point. Since it's related to the spine, it is by extension related to sex because ancient Egyptians thought semen was created in the spine. There's a theory that the djed along with the ankh and a third symbol called the was-sceptre all came together to represent the sexual organs of cattle.
So looking at all this together we can connect it to the lyrics of the song. First, the ankh and djed are pagan symbols. What do Christians hate? Pagans! The speaker in the song is turning away from the Christian God and giving herself to Satan or some other dark force, and this is symbolized by ancient pagan symbols. Moreover, both symbols having connections with renewing life, just like how the speaker in the song 'gotta new life' by giving herself to Satan. Then there's the sexuality aspect of the symbols, which represents the speaker's sexual union with Satan to receive her new life. (Revelation 18:2)
Now let's turn our attention to the birds in the album art. You're probably thinking that they're little white birds, that has to be good! It is not! Satan himself has been associated with birds in the new testament. In the parable of the sower, Jesus describes a farmer sowing his seeds when some fall on the path and birds came and ate them. Jesus then says that this represents "when anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart." So basically the birds = the evil one a.k.a. Satan. Also, the line I quoted also includes a bit about not understanding the message. This is eerily similar to the line in the song about how 'life is demanding without understanding.' The speaker flips Jesus' words about understanding God's message and turns it into understanding Satan's message. That's not the only passage in the Bible about birds. In Revelation it is written that Babylon becomes "a habitation of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird" (Revelation 18:2). So there's another connection between evil/the devil and birds.
Now what about that giant eye? There's a lot of symbolism with eyes, but the three most famous one is the mati a.k.a. the evil eye. The evil eye is an ancient Greek symbol that represents a malevolent glare that puts a curse on somebody. The Greek Fathers (influential theologians who established the doctrinal foundations of Christianity) cited the Devil as the source of the evil eye. The fact that the eye on the album art is blue definitely implies that it's meant to be the evil eye. But that's not all that the blue eye represents. One member of Ace of Base by the name of Ulk Ekberg was actually a neo-Nazi in his youth and with his old band Commit Suiside he wrote some super racist songs. It was Hitler's dream to purify the Aryan race until they were all blonde haired and blue eyed. I don't think that it's too controversial to say that white supremacy is super evil and that means Satan would probably be cool with it. So the blue eye represents worshipping Satan and his white supremacist ways. Side note: it's super hypocritical that the dude is a white supremacist yet the song The Sign has reggae influence and they use Egyptian symbols and despite what Hollywood tells you, ancient Egyptians were not white.
The final piece of the puzzle is the music video. There's not too much to say about the music video since I covered most of the themes already, but I'll go over some aspects.
So I think the symbolism here is fairly obvious. We have the ankh-djed in the midst of hellfire, invoking Satan.
Here we have two Ace of Base members, Linn and Jenny Berggren, surrounded by ankh-djeds and wearing all black. Satan is the prince of darkness so his followers would naturally prefer to wear black. The two women are presenting themselves as Satanists.
Now we see the silhouette of a man waving a flag. The man is physically fit and stands like a soldier. This represents white supremacy fantasy by having the man resemble the Aryan ideal of an athletic white man loyal to his nation.
We also see the story of a couple sitting in a dark room and they appear to be breaking up. In this frame, the ankh-djed is floating between them. This symbolizes that Satanism is causing the divide between the couple and that the woman is moving on.
This next frame shows Jenny Berggren wearing a form fitting red dress in a room of men. She represents the sexual aspect of Satanism and appears to us as a temptress.
For this scene we have another band member, I don't know if that's Ulf Ekberg or if it's Jonas Berggren, and he's got his right arm outstretched and his left hand on his heart. The right arm represents Sieg Heil used by Nazis and the left hand represents him devoting himself to evil.
Next we see a man and a woman kissing each other passionately in front of a lone candle. This represents the sexual union of Satan and his followers.
Here we've got Linn again, still wearing black and dancing in front of hellfire surrounded by ankh-djeds. She is reveling in the Satanic ritual.
We go back to the couple in the room. The woman has seen the light and left the man behind, symbolizing the speaker leaving behind her Christian life and lover to follow Satan.
We see the ankh-djed again, this time in front of a golden screen. This represents the idea of Satan as a light bringer and the speaker having been metaphorically reborn in following him.
So overall, this song is clearly about Satanism. Ace of Base, you have a lot of explaining to do.
CW for white supremacy
The introduction:
Whoa, oh, yeah
So the very first thing we hear from the singers is a vocalization to summon the dark lord. Satan doesn't communicate with just words (though he does understand every human language as well as some non-human ones) so to awaken Satan and bring him to the earthly realm, one must convey their motives through emotional vocalizations that will reach him.
The first lines:
(Ah) I gotta new life
You would hardly recognize me I'm so glad
We are introduced to the speaker of the song. She tells us that she has a 'new life', which means that she has just been initiated into the cult of the devil and has been 'reborn' in a dark baptism. She has become a totally different person from the experience and is reveling in her newfound servitude to Satan.
Continuing:
How could a person like me care for you?
(Ah) Why do I bother
When you're not the one for me
Ooh, is enough, enough?
She is looking back at her old life before initiation and wondering how she ever put up with it. She is addressing a 'you' in the song, but who is this mysterious person... or being? On a surface level, it might seem like she is addressing a former lover- and this might be the case- but she also could possibly be addressing God, or maybe Jesus Christ or simply some higher being that contrasts with the dark being she now has pledged allegiance to. If she is addressing a former lover, then it seems that they haven't joined her in Satanism and stayed with their God. She realizes that God/her lover are not the key to happiness and she has had 'enough' of this life, which is what leads her to Satanism.
The chorus:
I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes
I saw the sign
Life is demanding without understanding
I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes
I saw the sign
No one's gonna drag you up to get you into the light where you belong...
But where do you belong?
Just what was the sign she saw? Possibly a sign that she and her lover were no longer right for each other. Possibly a sign that introduced her to the sinister mysteries of Satanism. The line 'life is demanding without understanding' has a double meaning. The first is that life is difficult and doesn't understand humanity's struggles. Human lives are filled with hardships and no reprieve. The other meaning is that if you don't have an understanding of how life and the universe works, then life will be difficult for you. With the first meaning, the speaker is struggling with the difficulties of life and is dissatisfied with God. With the second meaning, the speaker realizes that she can make life easier if she somehow gains an understanding of it. She sees a 'sign' and learns that she can gain this understanding by giving her self to Satan. The lyrics don't indicate just exactly what this sign is (and I think it's partly metaphorical), but we will take a look at it when discussing the album art and music video in a bit. Then there's the line about how 'no one's gonna drag you up to get you into the light where you belong'. Now, we usually associate light with heaven, God, and all things good and holy. However, the true name of Satan is Lucifer- which means both 'morning star' and 'light bringer'. Ironically, the Prince of Darkness himself is a being of light. The speaker tells the listener that they too can belong to Lucifer, but that they must willingly give themselves to him. She leaves the chorus asking the audience this simple question: where do you belong? She is urging the listener to question their lives of suffering under God and possibly to think about dedicating their lives to serving Satan.
The second verse:
(Ah) Under the pale moon
For so many years I've wondered who you are
How could a person like you bring me joy?
Under the pale moon
Where I see a lot of stars
Ooh is enough, enough?
The speaker sets the scene and brings us to night where she is lost in thought under the watchful eye of the moon. The nighttime is significant because between 3am to 4am is what is known as 'the Devil's hour' or sometimes as 'the witching hour'. This hour belongs to Satan because there is an absence of Christian prayers at this time of night. It would make sense for the speaker to question her devotion to God at what is possibly this time. She says that she's often 'wondered who you are', i.e. she wonders who exactly is God and 'how could a person like [him] bring [her] joy' when life is so full of suffering. She looks again at the pale moon and sees 'a lot of stars'. If you paid attention to the previous paragraph, you'll remember that Lucifer can also mean 'morning star'. It is the Devil's hour, which is super early in the morning, and sees stars i.e. morning stars. Here she has seen a metaphorical sign and has made up her mind to give herself to Satan.
For the next parts, she vocalizes 'oh' a bit more and then sings:
I saw the sign and it opened up my mind!
And I am happy now living without you
I've left you, oh-oh-OH!
I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes I saw the sign
No one's gonna drag you up to get into the light where you belong
She then repeats the line 'I saw the sign' as the song is ending, leaving us on the final line of 'and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign!'
Here, the singer is reveling in her newfound life. She is happy to have left God or her Christian lover and is living it up in Satanism. The repetition of 'oh-oh-oh' represents an orgasm as she metaphorically gives her body to (has sex with) Satan to seal the pact. She repeats how she saw the sign and urges the others to give themselves to Satan as well, the repetition representing a grand celebration.
So, those lyrics were straightforward enough, let's take a look at the album art.
The first thing you no doubt notice- what is that symbol in the pupil of the eye? It's an ankh with a djed inside it. Let's take a closer look at these two symbols (I'm getting all this information from wikipedia).
The ankh is an ancient Egyptian symbol representing life, and in extension also representing air and water. Ancient Egyptian gods were often seen holding ankhs to symbolize their life-giving power. Moreover, ancient Egyptians believed that life was cyclical, like the setting and rising of the sun, the flooding of the Nile, the renewal of life after death. The ankh was eventually incorporated into Christian symbolism where it became the crux ansata, however the loop at the top became more circular. In the modern world, the ankh is sometimes used to represent African cultural heritage, as well as being a popular symbol amongst goths because I guess it was in some vampire movie in the 80s or whatever.
Let's talk about the djed now. The djed is another ancient Egyptian symbol, representing stability and is associated with the god of the dead and the underworld, Osiris. According to myth, Osiris was killed by the desert god Set by being tricked into a coffin where a tree grew around it and trapped Osiris in there and then a king took the tree and turned it into a pillar. Eventually, Osiris' wife Isis cut him out of the pillar and then consecrated it and it became the djed. So, like the ankh, the djed has connotations of renewal and rebirth. Also somehow it represents Osiris' spine, I don't get how when it's also the pillar he was cut out of? Whatever, not the point. Since it's related to the spine, it is by extension related to sex because ancient Egyptians thought semen was created in the spine. There's a theory that the djed along with the ankh and a third symbol called the was-sceptre all came together to represent the sexual organs of cattle.
So looking at all this together we can connect it to the lyrics of the song. First, the ankh and djed are pagan symbols. What do Christians hate? Pagans! The speaker in the song is turning away from the Christian God and giving herself to Satan or some other dark force, and this is symbolized by ancient pagan symbols. Moreover, both symbols having connections with renewing life, just like how the speaker in the song 'gotta new life' by giving herself to Satan. Then there's the sexuality aspect of the symbols, which represents the speaker's sexual union with Satan to receive her new life. (Revelation 18:2)
Now let's turn our attention to the birds in the album art. You're probably thinking that they're little white birds, that has to be good! It is not! Satan himself has been associated with birds in the new testament. In the parable of the sower, Jesus describes a farmer sowing his seeds when some fall on the path and birds came and ate them. Jesus then says that this represents "when anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart." So basically the birds = the evil one a.k.a. Satan. Also, the line I quoted also includes a bit about not understanding the message. This is eerily similar to the line in the song about how 'life is demanding without understanding.' The speaker flips Jesus' words about understanding God's message and turns it into understanding Satan's message. That's not the only passage in the Bible about birds. In Revelation it is written that Babylon becomes "a habitation of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird" (Revelation 18:2). So there's another connection between evil/the devil and birds.
Now what about that giant eye? There's a lot of symbolism with eyes, but the three most famous one is the mati a.k.a. the evil eye. The evil eye is an ancient Greek symbol that represents a malevolent glare that puts a curse on somebody. The Greek Fathers (influential theologians who established the doctrinal foundations of Christianity) cited the Devil as the source of the evil eye. The fact that the eye on the album art is blue definitely implies that it's meant to be the evil eye. But that's not all that the blue eye represents. One member of Ace of Base by the name of Ulk Ekberg was actually a neo-Nazi in his youth and with his old band Commit Suiside he wrote some super racist songs. It was Hitler's dream to purify the Aryan race until they were all blonde haired and blue eyed. I don't think that it's too controversial to say that white supremacy is super evil and that means Satan would probably be cool with it. So the blue eye represents worshipping Satan and his white supremacist ways. Side note: it's super hypocritical that the dude is a white supremacist yet the song The Sign has reggae influence and they use Egyptian symbols and despite what Hollywood tells you, ancient Egyptians were not white.
The final piece of the puzzle is the music video. There's not too much to say about the music video since I covered most of the themes already, but I'll go over some aspects.
So I think the symbolism here is fairly obvious. We have the ankh-djed in the midst of hellfire, invoking Satan.
Here we have two Ace of Base members, Linn and Jenny Berggren, surrounded by ankh-djeds and wearing all black. Satan is the prince of darkness so his followers would naturally prefer to wear black. The two women are presenting themselves as Satanists.
Now we see the silhouette of a man waving a flag. The man is physically fit and stands like a soldier. This represents white supremacy fantasy by having the man resemble the Aryan ideal of an athletic white man loyal to his nation.
We also see the story of a couple sitting in a dark room and they appear to be breaking up. In this frame, the ankh-djed is floating between them. This symbolizes that Satanism is causing the divide between the couple and that the woman is moving on.
This next frame shows Jenny Berggren wearing a form fitting red dress in a room of men. She represents the sexual aspect of Satanism and appears to us as a temptress.
For this scene we have another band member, I don't know if that's Ulf Ekberg or if it's Jonas Berggren, and he's got his right arm outstretched and his left hand on his heart. The right arm represents Sieg Heil used by Nazis and the left hand represents him devoting himself to evil.
Next we see a man and a woman kissing each other passionately in front of a lone candle. This represents the sexual union of Satan and his followers.
Here we've got Linn again, still wearing black and dancing in front of hellfire surrounded by ankh-djeds. She is reveling in the Satanic ritual.
We go back to the couple in the room. The woman has seen the light and left the man behind, symbolizing the speaker leaving behind her Christian life and lover to follow Satan.
We see the ankh-djed again, this time in front of a golden screen. This represents the idea of Satan as a light bringer and the speaker having been metaphorically reborn in following him.
So overall, this song is clearly about Satanism. Ace of Base, you have a lot of explaining to do.
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