Anyone who’s ever watched any of the American Horror Story series will know that it’s a gory, unnerving and nail biting hell ride from start to finish.
Series Five is currently showing on the Fox Network and this time its sinister backdrop comes in the form of a dodgy hotel; it also features a pretty much bollock naked, blood sucking Lady Ga Ga wreaking havoc within its walls.
There have been countless spine-tingling moments in American Horror story, but perhaps the most unsettling element of any series has to be the freaky nun song they continually play to the residents in series two: Asylum.
Every time the oppressive members of staff wish to calm the residents (or prisoners) they play this song on a record player and it is proper freaky, plus it gets stuck in your head. I was intrigued to find out more about the song so I did a little digging around and found this out:
The song is called Dominique by The Singing Nun, aka Belgian Singer Jeanine Deckers (before attempting to launch a pop career, she was actually a nun).
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Deckers was quite the rebel and many say that she was disowned by her own convent, which led her into a career in music. Dominique served to be her first hit and believe it or not, it actually topped The Beatles in the US charts – no easy feat in anyone’s book. After the colossal success of this cheery, eerie hit, Deckers was unable to release anything that even came close to the success of Dominique and eventually, she owed the government a huge amount of money in back taxes.
During this time of financial tournament, Deckers continued to rebel against the Catholic Church by publicly advocating contraception and even writing a song about birth control pills – and she openly had a lesbian lover, Annie Pecher.
The financial burdens continued to haunt Decker and eventually, it all became too much. In 1985 the lovers committed suicide by overdosing on Barbiturates; the note the left behind read:
“We have reached the end, spiritually and financially, and now we go to God.”
Of course, in the Catholicism, suicide is one of the greatest sins one can commit and it seems that the final scene in the tragic life of The Singing Nun was the ultimate act of rebellion.
Although the song sounds cheerier than The Tellytubbies on a cocktail of uppers, the song’s lyrics are largely about the torturous acts founded by patron saint Dominic – another unnerving fact about the doomed musical arrangement.
Next time you watch American Horror Story, or listen to Dominique by The Singing Nun, you’ll hear the truth lurking behind its chirpy melodies — and in some weird way, it almost sounds like Decker’s singing at you from beyond the grave.
