“Will You?” by P.O.D., Sunday, November 12, 2023

Following up two massively successful albums, The Fundamentals of Southtown and Satellite was a difficult task for "one of the biggest success stories" in Christian music. In 2003 P.O.D. released their fifth studio record Payable on Death--their namesake album. Earlier that year, the band released a song, “Sleeping Awake” for the Matrix: Reloaded. “Sleeping Awake” sounded quite different from the songs on Satellite. Notably, the band had a new guitarist--Jason Truby, replacing longtime member Marcos Curiel. Before joining P.O.D., Truby had been a member of the legendary Christian metal band, Living Sacrifice. In 2003, the Arkansas-based metal band also gave the fellow Arkansas-based band Evanescence the drummer, Rocky Gray.

THIS TIME I’M SORRY. Maybe really hardcore warriors, the fan army of P.O.D. fans can tell the real story behind the 2003 lineup change. Marcos Curiel, along with drummer Wuv Bernardo, was a founding member of Eschatos, the band that later became P.O.D. The band started out as a metal cover band, playing house parties in San Diego back in 1991. Bernardo invited his cousin, Sonny Sandoval, who had just become a Christian after the death of his mother. The band soon evolved into P.O.D. The line up of the band has stayed almost U2-consistent since the band released their first demo after adding bassist Traa Daniels until Curial left the band between 2003 and 2006. But why did Marcos leave in the first place? Was it to work on his side project, The Accidental Experiment, or was he kicked out of the band for a “difference in beliefs”? MTV News reported Curial’s dissatisfaction with what happened and alluded to the fact that his side project wasn’t Christian as a reason for being kicked out of the band. He also complained about the hypocrisy of how P.O.D. is portrayed to fans compared to how the members on tour or in real life. Whatever the true story is, Sandoval told Yahoo! Music that Truby was the reason the band stayed together. Truby recorded another album, Testify, with P.O.D. before the band reconciled with Curiel in 2006.

SEE YOU SITTIN’ BY THE WINDOW IN THE BEDROOM. Besides the member switch, Payable on Death was a controversial release due to the album’s cover art. The cover, a sketch depicting a topless woman with butterfly wings covering her breast with her arms, had the album banned from many Christian retailers. It was also thought to be an allusion to the occult. Whether it was poor reviews or the lack of Christian sales, the album sold nowhere near the amount of the two prior Atlantic Records releases. The lead single, “Will You,” reached #12 on both Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks and Mainstream Rock tracks. Lyrically, the song seems to fit into what Therapist, Author, and Podcaster Krispen Mayfield talked about on the Prophetic Imagination Station Podcast (now called This Is the Bad Place Podcast) as shamecore, or music often designed to make its listeners feel shamed. The song is a bit convoluted in terms of the speaker because of the mixture of first person pronouns and third person feminine pronouns, but it seems to ask the second person you if that person will stay with the speaker. The youth group explanation is no--outside of marriage, that person will ultimately leave the speaker broken. The video reinforces the narrative, played out like an episode of Dawson’s Creek. Youth after-school culture: avoiding an alcoholic mom by going to  a house party where there is a sexual experience in the bathroom which ends with the guy washing his hands and the girl crying. The video is a cautionary tale that made me think that was what was going on at public school, so it was best to stick with the youth group kids. Still, it wasn’t unheard of for the youth group kids to be part of this scene.

Read the lyrics on Genius.

Music video:

Jimmy Kimmel Live: