Sister Janet Mead
Encyclopedia
Sister Janet Mead is a Roman Catholic nun
Nun
A nun is a woman who has taken vows committing her to live a spiritual life. She may be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live her life in prayer and contemplation in a monastery or convent...

 and is best known for recording a rock version of The Lord's Prayer. The surprise hit reached #3 on the Australian Singles Chart (Kent Music Report) in 1974 and #4 on the Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

 in that same year. The single earned her a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

 nomination and Golden Gospel Award  in 2004. Mead became the second woman to have a top 10 single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart while serving as a nun. Sister Luc-Gabrielle, also known as Sœur Sourire and The Singing Nun
The Singing Nun
Jeanine Deckers , known in English as The Singing Nun, was a Belgian nun, and a member of the Dominican Fichermont Convent in Belgium. She became internationally famous in 1963 as Sœur Sourire when she scored a hit with the song "Dominique"...

, had a #1 pop hit in 1963 with "Dominique
Dominique
"Dominique" is a popular song in French by Sœur Sourire , of Belgium, also known as The Singing Nun. It is about Saint Dominic, a Spanish-born priest and founder of the Dominican Order, of which she was a member . The English version of the song was written by Noël Regney...

."

Mead formed a rock band simply called The Rock Band when she was 17 to provide music for the weekly mass at her local church. She studied piano at the Adelaide Conservatorium
Elder Conservatorium
The Elder Conservatorium of Music is Australia's senior academy of music and one of the country's most distinguished institutions for comprehensive education, professional training, and research in music...

 before joining the Sisters of Mercy
Sisters of Mercy
The Religious Order of the Sisters of Mercy is an order of Catholic women founded by Catherine McAuley in Dublin, Ireland, in 1831. , the order has about 10,000 members worldwide, organized into a number of independent congregations....

 order and became a music teacher at two local Catholic schools. She began to explore the "rock mass" concept in the early 1970s, desiring to make the Catholic mass
Mass (liturgy)
"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...

 more interesting and accessible for her students. This led to a successful series of "rock masses" that she conducted at Adelaide Cathedral.

She began making professional recordings of her music for schools and churches in 1973. Later that year, she went to Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

 for a recording session with Festival Records
Festival Records (Australia)
Festival Records was an Australian music recording and publishing company which was founded in Sydney in 1952 and operated until 2005....

 produced by Martin Erdman.

Festival asked her to record a cover of the Donovan
Donovan
Donovan Donovan Donovan (born Donovan Philips Leitch (born 10 May 1946) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music...

 song Brother Sun, Sister Moon which had been written for the soundtrack of the Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli KBE is an Italian director and producer of films and television. He is also a director and designer of operas and a former senator for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party....

 film
Brother Sun, Sister Moon
Brother Sun, Sister Moon is a 1972 film directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Graham Faulkner and Judi Bowker. The film is a biopic of Saint Francis of Assisi.-Plot:...

 of the same name, but Martin Erdman wanted to record a rocked-up arrangement of The Lord's Prayer to serve as the B-side
A-side and B-side
A-side and B-side originally referred to the two sides of gramophone records on which singles were released beginning in the 1950s. The terms have come to refer to the types of song conventionally placed on each side of the record, with the A-side being the featured song , while the B-side, or...

, and so a one-hit wonder
One-hit wonder
A one-hit wonder is a person or act known mainly for only a single success. The term is most often used to describe music performers with only one hit single.-Characteristics:...

 was born. The single was one of the fastest selling in history and became the first Australian recording to sell over one million copies in the U.S.A., earning a Gold Award for Sister Janet and Martin Erdman. Sister Janet donated her share of the royalties
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...

 to charity while Festival Records used their portion of the proceeds to refit one of their studios.

The phenomenal success of the single naturally led to an album. It was called With You I Am, which hit #19 in July 1974. Her second album, A Rock Mass, was a complete recording of one of her now famous rock masses. Sister Janet slipped onto the U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 charts once more with the follow-up single Take My Hand but never approached the immense success of her debut.

Being humble and media-shy, she resisted the call to continue her pop career, despite intense media interest. She now describes the record's success as a "horrible time" in her life — worldwide success brought a pressure that led her to question her faith. Her third album recorded in 1983 was filed away in the Festival vaults after Sister Janet withdrew from the public eye. The tapes were rediscovered by Martin Erdman a few years ago, and some tracks, including a new version of The Lord's Prayer, were included on the 1999 album, A Time To Sing. The album was released as part of the 25th anniversary celebrations of the hit single.

Sister Janet did not abandon her love of music and performance, and has returned to the arts in recent years. In October 2001, Sister Janet directed the Romero Company's annual production at the Melbourne Trades Hall Auditorium, an inventive adaptation by Damien Mead of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

's Les Misérables
Les Misérables
Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...

.

In 2004, she received the Yamaha
Yamaha
Yamaha may refer to:* Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services** Yamaha Motor Company, a Japanese motorized vehicle-producing company...

 Golden Gospel Award in recognition of her services to Australian Christian music at the Australian Gospel Music Awards in Canberra
Canberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...

. Martin Erdman also received the Yamaha Golden Gospel Award concurrently and presented a short feature film, Sister Janet Mead, at these awards which were coordinated by the Australian Gospel Music Association.

Controversies

Sister Janet Mead is associated with the extremist conservative charismatic religious movement known as The Romero Community. It is alleged that she is the leader of the South Australian commune.

External links



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