Rivers of Babylon - Sublime - MP3 instrumental karaoke

For their 1992 classic album 40oz to Freedom, Sublime tackled global smash hit "Rivers of Babylon," originally released by the Jamaican reggae group The Melodians in 1970 – which rose to fame largely thanks to its inclusion on the soundtrack for the 1972 reggae movie The Harder They Come – and ascended even higher thanks to the popularity of Boney M's 1978 version. The lyrics are adapted from the texts of Psalms 19, and 137 in the Hebrew Bible and reference the Israelites who escaped captivity in Egypt. Sublime took a stripped-back, sitting-round-the campfire approach to their live and fresh-sounding version of the tune, which frames the Rastafari song in a new acoustic light and positioned the gem as the penultimate track on 40oz to Freedom, the debut studio album from the Southern California ska-punks that went on to become a cult hit and one of the highest-selling independently released albums of all time.