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Social critics have long debated whether rock 'n' roll is the devil's music or heaven inspired. The latest Billboard album charts should add fuel to that theological fire. Last week dc TALK's album Supernatural debuted at No. 4, landing between Psychic Circus by KISS at No. 3 and Mechanical Animal by Marilyn Manson at No. 5. But while the demonic Manson courts controversy and the geriatric KISS covets relevance, dc Talk is appealing to a higher power. The Christian rockers consider the Almighty their greatest musical influence. Asked his opinion of Manson, whose last album was titled Antichrist Superstar, dc Talk's Kevin Max said, "I'd love to hang with him and discuss '80s music." Maybe they should talk literature. Manson's autobiography was titled Long Road out of Hell.
FASHION FORWARD
In the past several years, British designer Alexander McQueen, 29, has scandalized stylish society with such runway collections as "Highland Rape," which featured blood-spattered models, and "Joan," inspired by Joan of Arc. His success at shocking the studiously unflappable fashion cognoscenti has paid off with yards of fawning press and the post of chief designer at the classically haute house of Givenchy. But when the first model in his London fashion show hit the runway last week, she managed to upstage both McQueen and his clothes. Wearing a leather bodice and ruffled skirt, American AIMEE MULLINS, 22, a double amputee, also showed off a pair of sculpted wooden prosthetic legs. Born without shinbones, Mullins is a Paralympics champion who holds world records in two sprinting classes. To suggestions that she was being exploited by McQueen, she replied, "I want to be seen as beautiful because of my disability, not in spite of it."