IThe Smiths from Manchester recorded their Requiem for the Queen in 1986. They survived The Queen is Dead as a band by a year. Elizabeth II responded another 36 years until her death.
In 1952, when the Queen ascended the throne, pop culture was still young. Andy Warhol celebrated his first own exhibition with drawings based on texts by Truman Capote in New York’s Hugo Gallery. David Tudor presented “4’33”” by John Cage at Woodstock, a play about silence. Frank Sinatra was the star of the post-war years, in 1952 he was in the hit parade with “Why Try to Change Me Now”. Sun Records was founded in Memphis a year before Elvis recorded his first song there, for his mother.
William Henry “Doc H” Harris, organist and cantor of St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, taught Elizabeth of York as a young girl piano and madrigal singing. As a princess, she received two honorary doctorates in music. As a monarch, she was also a patron, not only for the in-house military bands. Since 2005 she has awarded the Queen’s Music Medal. And when she gave her Christmas address to the nation in 2018, there was a golden piano in the background that Queen Victoria had played on. As Elton John recognized at the time, she was also the queen of popular music. Here is a top ten of the most beautiful songs for and about her.
Elizabeth’s sister Margaret, Lord Snowdon and the Beatles in London in 1965
Quelle: picture alliance / ZUMAPRESS.com
Tenth place: “Queen Elizabeth” by Cheat Codes (2016)
Wie kommen drei Mittzwanziger aus Los Angeles dazu, der 90 Jahre alten Königin von Großbritannien ein solches Lied zu widmen? „Elizabeth / Elizabeth, she’s the girl next door / But she’s a little bit / Yeah, to me, she’s a little bit more / When I’m with her, then I feel like a king / Yes, I feel like a king / To be in her grace, I would do anything / I would do anything / I would go down on my knees, down on my knees.“
Why is she more than the girl next door to the three Californians Kevin, Trevor and Matthew, the woman before whom they fall on their knees? One does not know. Cheat codes became famous with “Sex” and other electronically produced hits for the 21st century raves. Did Queen Elizabeth know what EDM trap music is?
Ninth place: “Repeat” by the Manic Street Preachers (1992)
What was to be expected of five socialist Welsh separatists in the early 1990s went like this: “This is a message from occupied England: Fuck Queen and country.” It’s a four-minute anti-monarchist tirade with insults like “Royal Khmer” and “Dumb Flag Scum”, with execution fantasies, but also the insight that revolutions are only rock songs.
Eighth place: “Rule Nor Reason” by Billy Bragg (1999)
“The Queen on her throne plays Shirley Bassey Records when she’s all on her own / And she looks out the window / And cries,” sings Billy Bragg. The Queen sits lonely on the throne, listening to Shirley Bassey, looking out the window and crying. A harmonium also plays. Billy Bragg has always been more than a punk-driven red folk singer from Barking, east London. He considers himself a “Progressive Patriot”, as one of his books is called. It’s about Great Britain. Billy Bragg likes to sit alone in his Sussex home, listening to the Kinks, looking out the window and crying about England and the Kingdom.
Seventh place: “The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death” and “Flag Day” by the Housemartins (1986/87)
A northerner from Hull, Paul Heaton and the Housemartins were originally critical of the Queen in London. “London 0 Hull 4” was the name of her debut album. “Flag Day”, the key song on it, laments that there are too many Florence Nightingales in England and hardly any Robin Hoods. “Try shaking a box in front of the queen / ‘Cause her purse is fat and bursting at the seams.” Just try shaking a donation box in front of the queen just as her bulging wallet is bursting at the seams. As Paul Heaton goes on to say, it is the people’s money.
A year later, the Housemartins say: “The people who grinned themselves to death / Smiled so much they failed to take a breath / And even when their kids were starving / They all thought the queen was charming.” Everyone smiles to death until they can’t breathe while their children starve and find the queen quite magical. The two songs are about as charming as Upper East Coast BritPop can get.
Sixth place: “The Queen is Dead” by the Smiths (1986)
The popular interpretation of the Queen’s obituary sung by the Smiths has always been one-sided and narrow. As if Morrissey weren’t a poet but a protest singer. “Her very Lowness with her head in a sling / I’m truly sorry but it sounds like a wonderful thing”: The head of the British Empire with the noose around his neck, that sounds wonderful.
But the salutation alone as Royal Lowness is so deep in the steel bath of English irony that the song about the situation in the United Kingdom can also be heard lyrically. A young man travels through his country, through Leeds and Birmingham, shouting the news to the boys that the Queen is dead. She is still alive. Dead is what England used to be, and she couldn’t save it.
Fifth place: “God Save the Queen” by the Sex Pistols (1977)
The Sex Pistols’ anti-hymn was released to mark the silver anniversary of their coronation. As the nobility used to do, the punks enjoyed themselves with music on a boat trip on the Thames. John Lydon, who called himself Johnny Rotten at the time, shouted: “God save the queen, the fascist regime”, “God save the queen, she’s not a human being” and “There’s no future in England’s dreaming”.
Was the queen offended? Not that anyone knows. First, punk was a situationist spectacle. Second, he needed the Queen as the antithesis for the final sell-off of anarchy. And thirdly, John Lydon became a Conservative, promoting country butter from England on TV, walking around in tweed, campaigning for Brexit and wishing he could take the throne at Buckingham Palace himself.
Platz vier: „God Save the Queen“ (um 1800)
Anyone who talks about “God Save the Queen” must not be silent about “God Save the Queen”. The dialectic demands it. As with any great song, its deeper origins remain obscure, as the UK’s greatest hits creators of record know best. Musically, the anthem shines through in the works of Purcell and Bull. Since the early 19th century it has been sung to the words of Henry Carey for the king and queen, since Victoria it has been gendered.
So “God Save the Queen” became the mother of many pop songs. From “Heil dir im Siegerkranz”, “Gott bless Sachsenland” and “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” to “The Queen” by Gentle Giant and a rendition by Queen the rock band for their album “A Night at the Opera” to original cover versions of Laibach, Neil Young and the Einsturzenden Neubauten.
Third place: “Elizabeth My Dear” by the Stone Roses (1989)
“My message is clear / It’s curtains for you Elizabeth my dear,” declared Ian Brown and the Stone Roses in 1989. A clear message to the Queen for her final curtain call, lasting just under a minute. It was sung to the melody of the Old English folk song “Scarborough Fair”. So you could be wrong back then, when the border fences were opened and the walls fell. Thirty-three years later, “Elizabeth My Dear” sounds like a humble triumphal song for the queen of hearts.
Second place: “Dreaming of the Queen” by the Pet Shop Boys (1993)
If from englishness the talk is, it still comes before after hot and cold separate taps and the tea at five to Queen Elizabeth II, Stoicism and the Pet Shop Boys. Neil Tennant is the William Blake of pop music, Chris Lowe is the Ralph Vaughan Williams. In “Dreaming of the Queen” they encapsulate and set to music a vision: Imagine meeting the Queen and Ladi Di for tea.
“I’m aghast / Love never seems to last / However hard you try,” Liz says, love never seems to last a lifetime no matter how hard you try. Di says yes, it’s true, love has died because no lover lives anymore: “So there are no more lovers left alive / And that’s why love has died / Yes, it’s true / Look, it’s happened to me and you.” That’s what happened to both of them in the end. Then the dream is over. Di died just four years later, Liz lived 29 more years.
First place: “Her Majesty” by The Beatles (1969)
Der Abgesang der Beatles vor der Auslaufrille ihres Albums „Abbey Road“ dauerte ganze 23 Sekunden. „Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl / But she doesn’t have a lot to say / Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl / But she changes from day to day / I wanna tell her that I love her a lot / But I gotta get a bellyful of wine / Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl / Someday I’m going to make her mine, oh, yeah/ Someday I’m going to make her mine.“ Mehr nicht.
“Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl”: Paul McCartney and his Queen in 1996 in Liverpool
Quelle: picture-alliance / dpa
It’s a little love song about a pretty nice girl who doesn’t have much to say and who changes day by day. Paul McCartney sings that he would like to confess his love to her, but prefers to drink wine. But one fine day this pretty nice girl will be his. The Queen had already knighted him Paul, 29 years later she knighted him and another 20 years later had him pinned to a royal order, the Order of the Companions of Honour. Paul McCartney was right: she was a pretty nice girl, even if she didn’t really have much to say.