Edgelinks: Readers recommend songs about royalty: the results

Friday, December 17, 2010

Readers recommend songs about royalty: the results

Whether as something to aspire to, or something to turn against, royalty has long been a goldmine of a subject for songwriters

We've had one of the biggest turnouts in recent history on the blog this week ? there is clearly something special in the topic of royalty, something universally affecting. For songwriters it is, of course, a total gift. The concept of royalty gives you something to aspire to, a crown to wear, a throne to steal, but it also gives you something to turn your back on, something to belittle and revile. Ultimately, your love can be your queen or king, but your queen or king can never be your love.

Young Tiger's 1953 hit is journalistic in its detail, but the Trinidadian singer adds a brilliant twist. So the Queen is "really divine" and the Duke of Edinburgh is "dignified and neat", but the "young Creole" is actually empowered by what he sees. "She was there," he sings, "I was there." Rainbow's 1978 track is a joyous explosion that revels, rather charmingly, in every melodic-metal cliche known to man. "I'm no pawn," wails power-elf Ronnie James Dio on a tale of courtly power struggles, "so be gone/ Speed on and on/ Kill the king."

Island Records founder Chris Blackwell once told me Black Uhuru "had everything and threw it all away", but their music remains strikingly powerful. Ethiopia's King Haile Selassie, God to Rastafarians, had been dead less than two years whenI Love King Selassie was released. "Useless praying to the spirit," they sing, "'cause the spirit is within the flesh of I and I." No such love from early-80s punks Action Pact, who see nothing to celebrate in a system that only holds them back. "I used to wave a flag when I was at school," they snarl, "but these days I ain't so naive."

Adam & the Ants sidestep the whole issue by reinventing themselves as "a new royal family, a wild nobility", while Run-DMC take the idea one step further and declare they are the Kings of Rock, meaning, essentially, kings of the world itself. "I spend my time in a plush hotel," they exclaim, "take airplane flights/ At huge heights."

Sandy Denny's 1976 demo is an utterly beautiful piece that looks at the slow death of love and its crushing impact on two lovers. "What tailor could stitch up the torn blue sky?" she asks. "So the battle is done/ Nobody won." There was some debate as to whether the Waterboys' track really was about the death of Diana ("Is she conscious of the chauffeur as he drives?"), so I asked Mike Scott. He replied, "I like that it's ambiguous, but Diana is definitely there throughout."

Slade's relationship with "Jane" seems a bit troubled ? as, indeed, does her relationship with herself ? but they proclaim her, noisily and repeatedly, as a "Queen, can't you see what I mean" ? so there's some real affection there, despite it all. Finally, Boney M consider how the notorious Siberian psychic-healer Grigori Rasputin (who could "preach the bible like a preacher"), charmed his way into tsar Nicholas II's court, becoming not only religious adviser to tsarina Alexandra, but, hey!, "lover of the Russian Queen" to boot. Quite some skill. Respect really is due.