J. Jackson, lead singer and lyricist for ApologetiX here again.
Here are the stories behind the songs on our 16th single of 2025:
TEMPERS
I was a major Squeeze fan in college and owned four of their albums, including two that contained "Tempted," but ApX mixer David Michael was the one who suggested we spoof it. He hadn't even been born yet when the song originally came out, but who was I to temper his enthusiasm?
The protagonist of this parody sings in the first person but never identifies himself by name. However, if you're a regular reader of the New Testament, it should be pretty obvious from context clues that it's the Apostle Paul.
I was particularly thinking of his correspondence with the Corinthians (especially 1 Corinthians 1:10-17, 6:1-8, 13:5), but passages like Galatians 5:13-15, Ephesians 4:26-31, Philippians 4:2, Colossians 3:8, and 1 Timothy 2:8 seem to suggest Corinth wasn't the only church where believers needed to learn the finer points of anger management and conflict resolution.
Speaking as a guy who's been the de facto manager or co-manager of one band or another for over 40 years, I can attest that the whole group suffers (emotionally and performance-wise) if somebody within it is mad at somebody else and doesn't attempt to resolve things in a biblically prescribed manner.
Moreover, as a father of five, I love it all of my kids get along. If I hear one of them disrespecting another, I don't like it, and I'm generally pretty quick to do something about it. I think God feels the same way about His own children and the way they behave toward each other.
"Tempers" features J. Jackson on lead vocals and backing vocals, Tom Tincha on guitars, Rich Mannion on keyboards, Keith Haynie on bass, and Jimmy "Vegas" Tanner on drums and percussion.
WHO GETS TO WIN?
From 1996-2002, VH1 had a program called Pop-Up Video in which they would insert little factoid bubbles pertaining to a song as its video went along. "Who Gets to Win" would've worked well for that; it's very autobiographical, and I would've enjoyed inserting footnotes to explain what some of the lines meant.
VH1 incorporated a lot of humor into theirs, but this parody is quite serious. I got the title on December 1, 2024, although I didn't start writing the lyrics till July 24, 2025. Be that as it may, I'd been living them since I first consciously embarked on my spiritual quest in early 1987.
My wife really liked the line "And this seeker that He spared was a mountain that He moved." My point was (as she knew) that we may consider ourselves to be seekers, but if we find Christ, it's only because the Father drew us to Him (John 6:44). We think we're willing to move mountains in order to get to the truth but, in reality, we're mountains the Truth has to move in order to get to us.
Another line, "Romans 8 — I was in it for much of the time," works on two levels: First, it's a chapter of the Bible I spent a lot of time trying to memorize as a new Christian. Second, I was experiencing the things it talks about in my own life. As the lyrics say, "I was livin' to learn and learnin' to live.”
I got choked up singing the line "Yes, Christ made the difference" in the studio and when I've listened to it since. I don't know why it suddenly hit me as so poignant and personally profound, but it did. And it's true.
"Who Gets to Win?" features J. Jackson on lead vocals and backing vocals, Rich Mannion on keyboards, Keith Haynie on bass, and Jimmy "Vegas" Tanner on drums and percussion.
