‘Cathy Don’t Go’: Unravelling the bizarre hit song written by a cult
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The vast, vast majority of the time, things that a cult uses to “promote” their ways are the most ridiculous things imaginable.
Just look at the anime that Aum Shinrikyo produced in the early 1990s professing their founder’s divinity. Or the website of Heaven’s Gate, still operational today and, hauntingly enough, still maintained by a follower of their that stayed behind when the other followers of the cult did not. Charles Manson’s music, L Ron Hubbard’s novels, pretty much all godawful to anyone outside of the cult, even if it’s produced by someone talented.
There are few better examples of this than the song ‘Cathy Don’t Go’, a pop single released by The Family International on their 1985 album This Must Be Heaven. In terms of functionality, it’s a pretty basic, pretty pop song, the kind you can imagine from its key songwriter, Jeremy Spencer. If that name sounds familiar but you can’t quite put your finger on it, it’s likely that it’s because of your Fleetwood Mac phase, since he wasn’t just in the band, he was a founding member of it in 1967.
He stayed with the band for their initial ups and downs, recruited personally by Peter Green and staying after Green left the band in an LSD induced haze. Now, Spencer was uncomfortable with the poppier direction that later recruits Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham were taking the band, but his departure wasn’t caused by that friction. No, it was caused by a group of people zeroing in on the stress that friction was causing and hammering on it until he could take it no longer.
Why did this cult produce a pop single?
That, more than anything else, is how cults get you.
Intense, direct and unabashed emotional manipulation of people in a vulnerable state. Chances are that if Spencer hadn’t written this song, and instead heard it during its (extremely limited) run on the radio, he would have wet himself laughing, then never thought about it again. If he had, it would simply be to tell his friends about that weird song he heard on the radio about how supermarkets are satanic.
I’m not kidding, by the way, the supermarket is what the song is telling Cathy not to go to. A jaunty, up-tempo singalong about how the fact that supermarkets have things like computers, laser scanners and (this is a big one) barcodes everywhere, they are the work of the devil and will steal your soul if you get anywhere near them. It’s hilarious, so much so that it goes viral from time to time for its sheer ridiculousness. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that ridiculousness is part of the point.
After all, step one of cult recruitment is forming an intense personal relationship with a vulnerable person. Step two is making sure they don’t make any connection with anyone or anything else. It’s why you see cults doing weird shit like releasing pop singles about how supermarkets are satanic, because its members will see how ridiculed they get, and their bond to the cult is strengthened by being their only source of human connection.
A reminder that what might be laughable to us might just be a cry for help from someone who doesn’t even know they’re screaming it.
Content retrieved from: https://dangerousminds.net/music/the-bizarre-hit-song-written-by-a-cult/.
