As Libby Purves’ reported yesterday on her blog FaithCentral, a group of Cistercian monks from the monastery of Stift Heilgenkreuz in Vienna have hit the number nine spot on the British charts with their album of chant, Music for Paradise.
Unlikely? The monks are not the first, nor probably the last religious community to break into the Top 40. Below Faith Online lists some other, equally unlikely chart-toppers.
1. In first place, is the Singing Nun, a Belgian nun aka Soeur Sourire (Sr Smile) who hit the 1963 charts with Dominique, a song about the 12th century founder of her order, The Dominicans. Sr Luc Gabriel (as she was known in the convent) eventually left the nunnery and committed suicide.
2. Sr Janet Meads, an Australian nun who sold nearly 3 million copies of her grammy-nominated version of the Lord’s Prayer. It was number 3, in the US charts in 1973 and a top 10 hit in several countries in 1974.
3. The Benedictine monks of Silos in Spain reached number 5 in the US charts in 1994 with Chant, a collection of songs in Gregorian Chant, the ancient liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. This sparked a wave of copycat chant albums from just about every other Benedictine monastery going.
4. Little Computer Chip, from the rocking Greek Orthodox monks of Trikorfo, Greece reached number four in the Greek charts in 2001, though the monks' style attracted some controversy from the Holy Synod. The monks sing about the evils of globalisation and technology. All aged under 30, they followed up with a second album entitled SOS - Save our Souls.
5. They could be this year’s second religious hit: The Priests, a trio of singing clergymen from Northern Ireland have just been signed to produce a classical music album by EMI.