By Silly Ghost’s Tobias Forge has always had a talent for fusing the most exquisite musical touches with obscene lyrical imagery. He was the only one who could make his way into the mainstream of social media with a song that, on the surface, blended pop-rock hooks with sacrilege.
This was demonstrated by Mary on a Cross’s song viral success. A slowed-down, reverb-heavy rendition of the three-year-old song was posted by a TikTok user in September 2022 to serve as the music for a collection of Stranger Things sequences. It quickly gained popularity, and over 300,000 TikTok videos utilizing the original or modified version of the song were created.
Additionally, it was the band’s first entry into the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and went on to become their most listened-to song, now sitting pretty with over 210 million Spotify plays.
The band’s own mythology states that Mary On A Cross began in 1969, when an early iteration of Ghost dipped its fingers in the decade’s psychotropic waves. Even if it was portrayed by a swaggering, attractive priest named Papa Nihil, this funky Ghost from the 1960s didn’t blow the world away.
Only after Papa Nihil returned to the band in the twenty-first century and proclaimed himself Papa Emeritus Zero were Mary on a Cross and Kiss the Go-Goat dug up and reissued as the 2019 single Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic.
The Swedish rock band Ghost’s 2019 album “Seven Inches of Satanic Panic” included the song “Mary on a Cross,” but it wasn’t until a bit later that it began to gain popularity. A slowed-down version of the song went viral on TikTok in 2022, and fans used it as the background music for many modifications of their favorite shows.
You could initially assume that the song is about Mary, the mother of Jesus. The song is not religious at all, but its chorus seems to allude to a sexual act by using religion in a completely other way.
The chorus’s lyrics, “You go down just like Holy Mary, Mary on a, Mary on a cross,” are undoubtedly a reference to oral sex. The “real meaning” of the song is probably not that unexpected if you know anything about Ghost. According to The Independent, frontman Tobias Forge is basically a self-described modern Satanist, which makes the innuendo in the songs less alarming.
However, Tobias Forge has discussed the song, and it appears that it has been misunderstood. In an interview with Brann Dailor of Mastodon (via YouTube), Forge explained how his child’s buddy had heard that the lyrics to “Mary on a Cross” were “perverse,” which led Forge to elaborate on how the lyrics aren’t what they seem.
“There are a few, there are multiple layers of the lyrics — it might be important for people to understand that,” Forge explained. “The chorus is written very tongue-in-cheek, of course. ‘Go down’ doesn’t necessarily mean as in a 69 sense of the word. It can also mean ‘go down’ as in ‘go down in history, your own ascent.'”
According to Forge, the song alludes to individuals like Mary Magdalene whose motives have been misinterpreted. Nevertheless, as was indicated in the discussion above, the song has drawn a fair amount of criticism from people who find the lyrics insulting. In a subsequent Cutter’s RockCast broadcast, Forge addressed this matter once more, stating,
“Of course, that is the backside of it, people hearing it and finding it, like, deeply offensive and this that or the other, just because they didn’t have the brain capacity to sort of realize what it is about.”
It’s possible that Tobias Forge’s discussion of the “multiple layers of lyrics” with Brann Dailor alluded to the enduring narrative that Ghost incorporates into their songs.
For those who are unfamiliar, TikToker @darkcodedarti shared a video that explains the history of “Mary on a Cross.” There are two people in the lore: Sister Imperator, who Planet Radio refers to as “the head of the Satanic clergy of Ghost,” and Papa Nihil, who is Forge’s alter ego. Sister Imperator was once a lover of Papa Nihil.
The song was inspired by the imaginary couple’s reunion after they saw another music video called “Dance Macabre,” according to @darkcodedarti’s theory.
Mary on a Cross is still one of Ghost’s most popular and contentious songs; it’s an intriguing fusion of obscene imagery, unclear narrative, and emotional undertones. Even though Tobias Forge has made it clear that it is neither exclusively sexual nor exclusively spiritual, the fascination is nonetheless fueled by the multiple meanings and interwoven stories.
Mary on a Cross demonstrates Ghost’s ability to make the sacred and profane dance together, solidifying their place in both rock history and contemporary online culture, regardless of whether it is seen as satire, storytelling, or spiritual metaphor.
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