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“Dear God” was inspired by a series of books with the same title, which lead singer Andy Partridge saw as an exploitation of children. The song is essentially a letter to God asking about his existence.
The opening verse is sung by a friend's eight-year-old daughter, Jasmine Veillette, but was later lip-synched in the video by a young boy.
Originally released as a B-Side to the song "Grass," this was not included with the original pressing of Skylarking. After DJ's across America picked-up on the song, Geffen Records decided to replace the track "Mermaid Smiles" with "Dear God."
XTC has not toured in more than 15 years. They have done only a handful of radio station promotions, but performed this live during the 1986 CASBY award show (A Canadian Music awards show).
Todd Rundgren produced the Skylarking album; he cites the experience as one of the most unpleasant of his career. According to Rundgren, Andy Partridge wanted to produce the album himself, but XTC's record company insisted on bringing in Todd. The process dragged on… and on. As Rundgren tells it, Partridge hated performing, so he would spend as much time in the studio as he could. Rundgren was a big XTC fan when he started the project, but says he couldn't listen to them after.
This was used in the 2012 movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower, starring Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, and Ezra Miller.
Partridge would eventually become an atheist, but explained he was "wrestling with the tail end of my belief" when he wrote this. He said in an interview with SFGate: "As a kid, I was really… I got myself worked into such a sweat over religion. I remember that, about the age of eight or nine, one afternoon I had visions in the sky of clouds parting, and there was God on His throne, surrounded by angels, talking to me and grinning at me. I mean, if I lived in a Catholic community, I could've milked that and made myself a fortune! But, no, I think it happened because I was in such a hysterical state about religion as a child, and about the existence of God and that sort of thing. Religion is a source of a lot of problems, and if there is a God, he would hate Christianity, he would hate Islam, he would hate Buddhism, he would hate everything that's done in His name, because nobody behaves in a way that you're supposed to behave."
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