Sonseed - Jesus is a Friend of Mine

How a 1981 Catholic ska tune became a massive YouTube viral hit 27 years later

Aug 08, 2023

My good friend Shannon texted me last week to suggest an earworm song for the newsletter.

I don’t normally do requests, as I tend to write my posts as the earworms appear naturally. But 2023 has been the year of trying new things, so I’m all about expanding my methods.

(I know a few of you have offered to contribute/collaborate with Earworms and Song Loops. I’m putting the wider call out to y’all here — email me if interested and we can discuss details.)

When I clicked the link in the text and heard the first note of the song in the video, I was immediately catapulted back 15 years to when I first heard/saw the video “Jesus is My Friend,” by Christian rock band, Sonseed.

(Note: both “Jesus is My Friend” and “Jesus is a Friend of Mine” are listed about 50/50 on online videos, though the latter is the official title.)

Jesus is an Earworm

The song’s undeniable catchiness (and immediate earworminess) had lost none of its sonic shine since last hearing it a decade and a half ago. If anything, it’d only grown in brilliance for me. Joy, both exuberant and subtle, is alternately expressed by the musicians of Sonseed in the video. Bassist and lead vocalist Sal Polichetti represents the exuberance; his then-wife Patricia Costagliola (keyboards, vocals) exhibits a more low-key approach. Rounding out the instrumental players in the band are Frank Franco (guitar, vocals) and Nicky Sciarra (drums). On backing vocals, there’s Melody Sorrentino, Anne Lessing, Jim Archer, and Tom Zawacki.

As a fan of retro-obsessed Adult Swim cringe comedy, Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show, Great Job (2007-2010), I assumed that “Jesus is a Friend of Mine” was in the same satirical vein: a well-made parody of Christian rock videos from the ‘70s and ‘80s.

I mean, it had to be a satire, right? The first two verses of the song seemed innocuous enough:

He taught me how to live, my life as it should be
He taught me how to turn my cheek when people laugh at me
I've had friends before, and I can tell you that
He's one who will never leave you flat

and

He taught me how to pray, and how to save my soul
He taught me how to praise my God and still play rock and roll
The music may sound different but the message is the same
It's just the instruments who praise his name

And then, after a tasty bass solo, the 3rd verse appears and the innuendo is hard to ignore:

Once I tried to run, I tried to run and hide
But Jesus came and found me and he touched me down inside
He is like mountie, he always gets his man And he'll zap you any way he can. Zap!

Well, apparently we are all heathen perverts, because it turns out that Sonseed was a legit Catholic gospel band from Brooklyn, New York, formed in the late ‘70s and disbanded in 1983. The crappy-looking, oddly-staged video was, in fact, filmed in 1981 and of a similar quality of many public access shows of the time.

According to an interview Mike Rimmer of Cross Rhythms.co.uk had with Sal Polichetti in October 2010, Sonseed had originally formed as part of the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Brooklyn, New York in the late 1970s.

From Sal:1

We were just talking about the state of religious music, specifically at the time Catholic music, which was basically folk music written by Brothers or Priests or organ music and choir stuff. All the really good Christian music at the time was from evangelicals so The Imperials were very big then and Amy Grant but none of it was Catholic. And of course one of the musicians said, 'Gee, why don't we start a band?'"

Sowing the Sonseeds of Love

And so, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Sonseed was born. But how did this particular video performance come to exist, you might wonder?

Apparently the band was contacted by Dr. Russell Barber of the WNBC (channel 4 in New York) TV show “The First Estate.”

More from Sal:2

"The First Estate" used to air on Sunday mornings at 11AM. It dealt with religious issues and was multi-denominational. They had never had a musical act on before; usually (it was) priests or rabbis discussing whatever the hot topic of the day was. They weren't quite sure how to shoot us or how it was going to work out. By the way, we had no say about what songs were going to be taped for air. "Jesus is a Friend of Mine" was selected by Dr. Barber because it was different.

Their appearance on The First Estate, alas, didn’t send Sonseed into the rock and roll stratosphere. The band would break up less than two years later.

Swish pan 26 years ahead to 2008.

YouTube has been around for a little more than three years. But it’s growing like gangbusters. Viral videos like “Leave Britney Alone” and “Jizz in My Pants” by Lonely Island are being Hotmailed to friends and family across the world.

The story of how “Jesus is a Friend of Mine” ended up on YouTube is unclear, but lostepiphany79, the account owner of the channel where the video has lived since it’s upload in 2008 says:

“…A friend on Myspace shared it with me & I just CAN’T NOT share with everyone on Youtube….”

So, apparently, within a matter of days after lostepiphany79 posted “Jesus is My Friend” (with the incorrect title) to YouTube, word spread as it does, and within only a couple of months, the video had over a million views! After one year, three million.

As the screen-cap above shows, more than 14 years after the song’s initial YouTube upload, it’s garnered 14 million views. Like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon staying on the Billboard album charts for a record 972 weeks, Sonseed’s video has long outlived its “viral” trendiness, remaining a steady YouTube fixture despite there being more 500 hours of video3 uploaded to the streaming service every minute! To put that in perspective, when the video first went viral in 2008, there were 15 hours of video uploaded in a minute.4

So the fact that a goofy religious video from a no-name Catholic band in New York in 1981 would have 14 million views and still gaining more, 15 years after being uploaded? I’d say that’s a comparable feat to Pink Floyd.

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A Pop-Culture Phenomenon

“Jesus is a Friend of Mine” remained part of the pop-culture zeitgeist longer than anyone could have imagined — not just because of its YouTube views though.

As often happens when a video goes viral, parody versions begin to proliferate, some of them worth celebrating. Most not.

A death metal version, renamed (you might have guessed) “Satan is a Friend of Mine” has more than 770,000 views.

Then there’s this wonderfully sweet version about a dog named Cheeto that is amazingly well-done. As a dog walker, you can imagine this one is my personal favorite.

There’s many others, but these two are the best.

Parody videos on YouTube are one thing. But becoming a part of the cultural landscape requires something far more impressive. What about a feature on a hit TV show? Or two?

Check out how “Jesus is a Friend of Mine” was incorporated into an episode of Glee (Fox: 2009-2015) and Community (NBC: 2009-2014, Yahoo Screen: 2015), below.

In my research, I discovered on the Sonseed Facebook group (yes there is one; and a Reddit Ska group thread on Sonseed), that Godmother of German Punk, Nina Hagen, had performed a cover of “Jesus is a Friend of Mine,” titled “Jesus Ist Ein Freund Von Mir.”

This in particular blew my mind.

And lastly but not leastly, original band member and creator of this amazing song, Sal Polichetti, has performed “JIAFOM” with several ska bands over the years. My favorite is this one with Rude Boy George from four years ago. Sal is still rocking it hard and showing off his basstastic acumen.