This is one of the most powerful songs I know. The opening line is defiant,"Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine". It is so defiant that it used to bother me, actually. I felt like it was cocky and disrespectful, but that was before I understood what Patti Smith was really saying. In her memoir Just Kids she directly addresses this phrase. By owning her sins, by not letting her self off the hook, she gained freedom. She's not dissing Christ or Christianity, she's acknowledging her faults and owning them. To be free is to accept everything about yourself and the world, even the sins and the sinners. That was a radical realization for me. It gave me freedom too.
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