"God Must Be a Boogie Man" by Joni Mitchell (from the album Mingus, 1979)
A charming bit of swinging theology from one of the great songwriting masters. This tune opens Joni's tribute album to the great Charles Mingus and was inspired by the first few pages of his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog. (Never read it? You should. He turns the expectations of genius-artist this-is-my-life writing on its head so thoroughly that you'll either laugh or cry or throw the book across the room or all three, but you won't be unstimulated for one second.) While I don't like to think too much about the nature of God for the unavoidable vertigo that follows (I'd rather just assume there is a big master-blaster up there and that s/he loves me and that there are no floods or turns-into-salt coming my way), I can't help but think that Joni's refrain about the cosmos adhering to "a cock-eyed plan" is spot-on.
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