Wire / Wire / 2015
Blogging
deadpan, satirical, faintly apocalyptic
Wire recast the nativity story as a satire of digital-age commerce and self-promotion, splicing biblical imagery with the vocabulary of apps, hashtags and online retail. The song treats belief, celebrity and marketing as interchangeable systems, all running on the same algorithmic logic.
technology and faith commodification of belief surveillance and self-branding consumerism irony of progress
Who's speaking
An unnamed collective or corporate-adjacent narrator describes events with detached, almost promotional enthusiasm, making the speaker complicit in the absurdity being mocked rather than standing outside it.
What happens
The song opens with the nativity re-staged as a tech-industry news item, then moves to a cynical marketplace of shepherds-turned-influencers and vanishing resources, before ending in a scattershot inventory of digital consumer life -- voting, buying, selling, branding -- closing on an image of extraction and destruction dressed up as growth.
How it's built
Three verses of dense, list-like imagery are broken by a chorus that repeats a blasphemous-comic conflation of religious icons with social media platforms. The verses accumulate disconnected phrases rather than building a scene, mimicking a scrolling feed; the chorus acts as a hook that keeps returning listeners to the song's central joke.
Section by section
Opening verse
“Google star maps”
The magi are reimagined as tech researchers navigating by satellite data rather than prophecy, immediately establishing the song's core move: sacred narrative rerouted through consumer technology.
Chorus
“Blogging like Jesus”
The hook fuses messianic authority with social media platforms, suggesting that fame, faith and follower counts now operate on the same currency of visibility.
Second verse
“the camel has died”
An old proverb about impossibility is made grimly literal, implying that the barriers meant to check greed or excess have collapsed entirely under market pressure.
Final verse
The song ends in a rapid inventory of everyday digital transactions -- voting, buying, branding -- collapsing civic and commercial life into indistinguishable acts of consumption, before closing on an image that equates expansion with destruction, undercutting any sense of triumph in the technological narrative.
Craft
- anachronism
- Placing modern brand names and technologies inside the nativity story collapses two eras into one continuous system of commerce and spectacle.
- list/catalogue
- The verses proceed as clipped, juxtaposed phrases rather than sentences, imitating the fragmented scroll of a social feed or news ticker.
- religious parody
- Sacred figures and rituals are refitted with corporate and app-based language, flattening reverence into marketing.
- idiom subversion
- A familiar proverb about impossibility is twisted into a literal, morbid image, signaling that the old moral limits no longer apply in this new economy.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a critique of how technology commodifies belief systems -- religious, political, and personal -- turning them into content streams optimized for engagement. An alternative, less critical reading might hear it as simple absurdist wordplay, delighting in incongruous juxtaposition for its own sake rather than mounting sustained social commentary; Wire's history of ironic detachment makes both readings plausible simultaneously.
Context
This appears on Wire's 2015 self-titled album, made decades after their post-punk origins, when the band had settled into a mode of wry, controlled artistry rather than confrontational aggression. I don't have confirmed details about the song's specific writing circumstances beyond what the lyrics themselves suggest.
Listen for
- the flat, newsreader-like delivery that keeps the satire deadpan rather than shouted
- how the chorus melody makes blasphemous phrasing sound almost celebratory
- the shift in pacing between verse and chorus, mimicking scroll-and-pause social media rhythm
- the way religious and corporate vocabulary are given equal weight in the mix
About Wire
Wire are an English rock band. They were formed in London in October 1976 by Colin Newman, Graham Lewis, Bruce Gilbert (guitar), George Gill and Robert Grey.
1976 - present / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue