The Pope's P.R. Man is Cooler Than You Thought, But Still Lame

You can do whatever you want as long as you confess before you die, you'll never get into heaven unless you buy these indulgences, the Earth is flat and revolves around the sun, God built the world in six days, condoms cause AIDS, fish is the only meat that should be consumed on Friday, rock'n'roll is the Devil's music...the Catholic powers-that-be have said some really funny shit over the years.

Luckily for the meek, the Church always flip-flops once it's clear that all of its followers are disobeying them in secret and they can be sure there will be no push-back for suddenly changing God's opinion on things.

With that in mind, here are the Pope's Top 10 Pop Albums of All-Time, courtesy of L'Osservatore Romano, via The Guardian:

What can be learned from this list, aside from the fact that God likes lists to be ten items long and carved into stone tablets sitting in my bathroom?

- The Pope only listens to men playing music, specifically men from England/Ireland and the United States. Oh, yeah--and a Hispanic afterthought to quell the biggest Catholic base in the world.

- He has good taste (Graceland, Revolver) and bad taste (Achtung Baby, Rumours).

- He never liked Santana until he paired himself up with a series of douchebag Gringos (I'm looking at you, Dave Matthews and Rob Thomas!)

- The best pop music was recorded between 1966 (Beatles) and 1995 (Oasis), a bold statement that I'm sure Lady Gaga would love to vomit on, if only out of respect for Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Peter Bjorn and John, Of Montreal, and Elvis.

- Ray Davies, Pete Townshend, and Mick Jagger are peeing in the holy water at St. Peter's as we speak

- The Pope has a soft spot for albums that have sold a shit-ton of copies:
Thriller - 110 million
The Dark Side of the Moon - 45 million
Rumours - 40 million
Supernatural - 27 million
(What's the Story) Morning Glory - 22 million
Achtung Baby - 5.3 million (as of 2003)
Revolver - 5 million (as of 2003)
Graceland - 5 million (as of 2003)

Along with a couple dark horses from industry veterans, to appear interesting:
The Nightfly - 1 million+
If I Could Only Remember My Name - ?

Is any of this surprising? No. Does anybody really care? No. Will the Pope win any religious converts with this pandering list? No. Will any artist on this list experience a sudden increase in back-catalog album sales? Definitely.

I wonder if Catholic Church, Inc. has arranged for a cut of said album sales. I mean, come on, they're not idiots over there--let us not forget they've been running an international cult for almost two thousand years, own more real estate than you can fathom, and made a $9 billion profit in 2001 alone.

Developing...

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