“The Mercy Seat” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

"The Mercy Seat" is the black heart of Tender Prey, the 1988 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, and few rock songs have ever stared this hard at death. Cave wrote the words and the music with Mick Harvey, and the story belongs to a man waiting for the electric chair. The title cuts both ways: it's the chair itself and the lid of the Ark of the Covenant, God's throne in the Old Testament, and the song is thick with Christian and scriptural allusion. Its refrain comes back 15 times, changing a little on each pass, until the repetition feels like a sentence being carried out.

The Bad Seeds produced it themselves: Blixa Bargeld on slide guitar, Harvey on bass, guitar and piano, Roland Wolf on guitar, Thomas Wydler on drums, Cave on Hammond organ, and strings from Gini Ball, Audrey Riley and Chris Tombling. Tony Cohen and Flood engineered it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.