Description
The Lord’s Prayer is a full-length album by the Australian singer Sister Janet Mead (1938 – January 26, 2022), released on A&M Records in 1974, though originally released in Australia by Festival Records, entitled With You I Am. The album was produced and recorded by Martin Erdman at Festival’s own studio in Sydney, Australia.
Sister Janet Mead actually recorded a single first, “Brother Sun & Sister Moon” (a song written by Donovan), with “The Lord’s Prayer” on the B-side. The single sold 250.000 copies in ten days in the US, and the flip-side, “The Lord’s Prayer”, hit the No. 4 position on Billboard Magazine‘s Pop Chart April 13, 1974. The phenomenal success of the single led to the recording of the full-length album With You I Am, which hit No. 19 in July 1974. (The profits from the massively successful “The Lord’s Prayer” contributed to the refurbishment of Festival’s Studio A with a Neve mixing desk and a 24-track recorder, resulting in that studio’s renaming to “Studio 24”, which commonly appears as Festival’s Studio 24 on mid-70s releases. Mead though donated her share of the royalties to charity.)
THE LORD’S PRAYER – SISTER JANET MEAD – A&M SP – 3639 (6.98)
The Singing Nun hit the charts in ’63 with «Dominique», and now, 11 years later, Sister Janet Mead has brought religious rock to the forefront with the title tune of her recently released album. The album, which is laden with Bible-oriented compositions, will certainly ride the crest of the
super-successful single. [Record World, July 6, 1974 (Record World Album Picks)]
Janet Mead formed a group called the Rock Band when 17 to provide music for the weekly mass at the local cathedral. A Sister of Mercy, Sister Janet Mead’s goal was to make contemporary Mass music available for everyone to understand and enjoy. In 1973 she started making records for churches and schools, but Festival Records detected a wider appeal for her lovely voice and recorded the soon-to-be hit on the B-side of a Donovan song, «Brother Sun & Sister Moon» (which had been written for the soundtrack of the Franco Zeffirelli film of the same name). Disk Jockeys flipped it and «The Lord’s Prayer» became so popular that A&M Records distributed the record worldwide to more than 31 countries. It became the first Australian record to go gold, selling more than a million copies in the United States, and two million worldwide. She donated all the royalties from the sales to charity. Sister Mead crept into the States charts once more with «Take My Hand», but never appeared again.
Mead became the second woman to have a Top 10 single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart while serving as a nun. Sister Luc-Gabrielle (Jeanine Deckers) AKA Sœur Sourire and The Singing Nun, had a Number 1 pop hit in 1963 with «Dominique».
I believe that life is a unity and therefore not divided into compartments. That means that worship, music, recreation, work and all other “little boxes” of our lives are really inseparable and this is why I believe that people should be given the opportunity to worship God with the language and music that is part of their ordinary life. The words of the songs on this record almost all come from books of the Bible, which so richly expresses the longings of man’s heart, his loneliness, his joy, his dependence on God, his desire to love his fellow man and to live in peace. We all recognise these yearnings – they are ours and are common to each of our lives.
In the «The Lord’s Prayer» there is a phrase which expresses what I believe is Christ’s ideal. It says, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” That is what I think Christ tried to bring about. He kept talking about initiating the kingdom of heaven on earth. What I think he meant was that he wanted us to share in His vision of drawing people together in happiness, joy and peace. Music has all the qualities to help in this – it breaks down barriers, unites, makes us forget ourselves, make us aware of others and is totally involving.
In my life I have had the great happiness of seeing many people work together forr good. My parents who first taught me to love, the community of nuns in which I work, the students in my school in Adelaide, my very numerous friends, the young people who have devoted their time to preparing each week for hours for their Youth Masses and now the record company with which I have worked to make this record. If I, one person, have seen so many people of good will in a comparatively short life, surely it is innately in us all to work together in our own small way for the unity of mankind.
[Liner notes by Sister Janet Mead, printed on the back of the LP sleeve.]
LP tracklist:
Side One
A1. “The Ten Commandments” – 2:48
A2. “With You I Am” – 2:42
A3. “Gloria” – 2:15
A4. “Father I Put My Life In Your Hands” – 3:32
A5. “Take My Hand” – 1:54
A6. “The Lord’s Prayer” – 2:42
Side Two
B1. “Lamb Of God” – 2:56
B2. “Keep Me Safe” – 1:49
B3. “The Earth Is Filled” – 2:46
B4. “Hold On” – 2:47
B5. “God My God” – 2:29
B6. “He Is King” – 4:49
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.