If you were alive and listening to music in the ‘90s, you remember the Crash Test Dummies . The baritone voice of lead vocalist/songwriter Brad Roberts singing “Mmm, Mmm, Mmm” was unavoidable, and whether you liked it or not, they weren’t going anywhere. Over the years, Crash Test Dummies would release eight albums, and while they may have dropped out of the commercial eyes of the media, the Dummies continued to do what they did best. Deliver thought-provoking songs with a sly wink of humor to anyone and everyone who tunes into them.
I was trying to think of the best way to describe Crash Test Dummies to a friend of mine who pretty much lived under a fucking rock throughout the ‘90s and didn’t even remember them. He barely remembered that Spin Doctors were a big band, not some obscure NYC jam band. So I told him that if Barenaked Ladies (a band he knew of) was junior high/freshman high school humor, Crash Test Dummies were first or second-year college undergraduate humor.
The music of Crash Test Dummies always appealed to me. Whether they were singing about the reality of random thoughts during sex (Swimming In Your Ocean), creating a song based on “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Elliot (Afternoons and Coffeespoons), or poking fun at the pretentiousness of the fine art gallery culture (When I Go Out With Artists), it all connected with me and made me happy. It was fun, musically interesting, and lyrically made me think (but not too much.)
Crash Test Dummies was also a band that wasn’t afraid to go a bit dark. Songs like “The Ghosts That Haunt Me” from their debut of the same name, “Superman’s Song,” and “Heart of Stone,” showcased a side of Brad Roberts’ creative mind that connected with me on a deeper, personal level.
Crash Test Dummies always had a song for me to match any mood or place in life I may be in, and it’s why I stayed a fan all these years. Finally, in 2023 during a lengthy North American tour, Crash Test Dummies released the new song “Sacred Alphabet.” Brad Roberts’ signature lush, baritone voice floats above a sparse yet intense wave of piano, subtle drums, ambient sounds, and the beautiful vocalizing of Ellen Reid.
Lyrically, much like the darker material of Crash Test Dummies, it made me feel something. I listened to the song probably seven times, trying to form my idea of what this song was about. I think a genuinely great song doesn’t have a literal meaning or story but leaves it up to the listener to conclude.
In “Sacred Alphabet,” my atheistic beliefs seem to be acknowledged and shared. The opening lyrics of the song say this:
In the beginning was not the word, not yet.
There was no sacred alphabet.
No subject, object, verb, or tense,
Sound had not been enslaved to sense.
In a nutshell, I always believed that religion failed us. The “word” of God was supposedly spoken, but historically, language didn’t even exist. As history also taught us, once the spoken word did become a thing, it eventually became the end of innocence. The spoken word became a valuable, positive tool and a weapon of destruction that, many times in our Earth’s existence, failed us miserably.
All of this being said, this is my conclusion about what the lyrics signify. As I stated earlier, it’s beautiful when a song makes you think, feel, and means something to you, while it may have a completely different meaning and connection to someone else. Maybe it’s Brad Roberts’ way of inducing an internal dialogue only to look on with a sly smirk knowing that he has made his way into my psyche. Then again, maybe it’s just a song.
“Sacred Alphabet” is definitely one of my favorite songs of the last decade or so, and it proves that Crash Test Dummies are nowhere near finished, and you know what? I’m really fucking happy about that.
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