The Jubilee tends to arouse a wide range of emotions.
Having one of those roundtable discussions in the Clash office, the team were totally divided on how to mark the event. In one corner sit a bunch of anti-traditionalist Republicans, while in the other are perched a group of people who see it as an evocation of something warm, tradition-based in the British soul.
Feeding word out to the writing pool, Clash began to piece together a playlist which would cover each of these opinions and more.
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The Stone Roses – ‘Elizabeth My Dear’
Well he might rest a little bit until she’s lost her throne. Such vitriol for a figurehead seems a bit much. It’s like threatening to kill the vicar’s secretary because you’re pissed off at God. I mean, what does the queen do anyway? Open shopping malls? Send postcards to Iceland? People complain about how much it costs to support the monarchy, but think of all the money she’s saved by living to be 120 years old. Coronations are expensive!
Scott Creney
Pet Shop Boys – ‘Dreaming of the Queen’
Not sure whether this goes in the ‘pro’ or ‘con’ column. I’m not even sure if Neil Tennant knows. It circles back on itself so many times–the lyrics drift from despairing to droll, the music shifts from triumph to desolation–that the song’s inability to resolve its own contradictions becomes, in a high school english teacher sense, what the song is about. For a monarchy that is simultaneously a pillar of national identity and something very silly and outdated, ‘Dreaming of the Queen’ feels totally appropriate. The fact that it isn’t even one of my favorite PSB songs just makes it even better. A queen? A jubilee? Sure. Why not. Whatever.
Scott Creney
The Kinks – The Village Green Preservation Society
Not only are a number of things The Kinks want to save particularly British in nature (Desperate Dan, strawberry jam, draft beer) but believing these trifling matters warrant such a campaign has a particularly British sensibility too. Stepping away from their hard-rock template, Village Green is three minutes of wry wit and pastoral joy.
Joe Rivers
Manic Street Preachers – Repeat (UK)
Despite protestations they were “4 REAL”, there was always a lot of posturing from early period Manics. This is about as clear a statement of intent as you can get though: sirens, squealing guitars and bags of punk attitude. As retorts to the jubilee go, they don’t come more anarchic than: “Repeat after me! Fuck Queen and country!”
Joe Rivers
The Sex Pistols – God Save The Queen
Well this would have to be in there, surely? When Lydon was Rotten. The entire country was falling into a blissful Jubilee daydream and The Sex Pistols came along with their nasty guitars to boot everyone back into the real world. Probably the band’s finest moment, it was famously denied the number one slot due to a rigged chart. But then, that just adds to the mythology, the allure.
John Cage – 4:33
The sound of silence. The melody of apathy.
Blur – Jubilee
Flies on the wall throughout the turbulent decade known as the 90s, Blur helped to define a Britain which was continually in flux. Turning old tearooms, fading seaside towns and greyhound racing into something poetic, it was inevitable that Blur would eventually turn their focus to Her Majesty. Not their finest moment, ‘Jubilee’ is nonetheless a bracing piece of threeminuteshoutypunk about teenage angst and living in your parents’ shadow. Charles would no doubt approve.
The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead
Like most Morrissey lyrics, this isn’t really about the Queen. Oh sure, he breaks into the palace and asks Charles is he feels like wearing drag but deep down, this is another Morrissey piece picking apart the mechanisms of alienation. Divided from everyday life by birth, the Royal Family life an intensely pressured life where each movement is poured over by a rabid tabloid press. Life is very long when you’re lonely…
Pulp – Common People
If the confusion and violence of last summer’s riots demonstrated one thing, it’s that class remains a deeply contentious issue in the UK. Perhaps the last visible evocation of a by-gone upper class, the Queen is anointed powers by birth that stand in sharp contrast to the struggles of those chained in by estate life. Still as sharp as the day it was penned, ‘Common People’ is reason enough to Jarvis Cocker to be elected Prime Minister.
God Save The Queen (arranged by Benjamin Britten)
God Save The Queen is a dirge, a syrupy, sludgy mess of a song. In Benjamin Britten’s hands, though, the piece manages to retain some sense of dignity. A thoroughly anti-establishment figure, Britten’s arrangement of ‘God Save The Queen’ is subversive yet reverent, progressive yet steeped in tradition.