The Proclaimers were removed over the weekend from the official playlist for King Charles’ coronation, apparently after complaints about Craig and Charlie Reid’s “anti-royal” views.
While the brothers haven’t been caught spray-painting “King Charles sux” on motorway overpasses, Charlie has never been backwards about coming forwards about the monarchy. Last year he defended the academic who was charged for using abusive language towards the king by shouting “Who elected him?” at his newly minted majesty at an event in Oxford. “I thought that guy spoke for me, and he speaks for loads of other people. Not just in Scotland but right around the UK,” Reid said.
And while he expressed sympathy after the queen’s death, and had “personal respect” for Liz, he didn’t have any for the system that keeps appointing members of the same family as head of state, unopposed and unelected.
There has been no official statement from the palace or from The Proclaimers about the decision to drop them from the playlist. In fairness, the pro-independence Scottish band don’t seem to care all that much. That would be a bit like Kanye West being upset that his tracks didn’t get a spin on RTÉ Lyric FM.
It will be the king who will be left worse off, having lost the opportunity to belt out “And I will walk 500 miles” on the post-coronation dance floor with his tie around his head, as is one’s right when throwing a party to celebrate a milestone in life.
The rest of the official playlist was, according to the British department of culture, selected to “celebrate British and Commonwealth artists ahead of the upcoming coronation”. Which is interesting, because Boney M made the cut. So the leaders of the “Mam’s had a few sauvignon blancs and is up dancing” genre got in despite being German-Caribbean and having a song called Belfast that explores the complexity of the Troubles through the appropriate medium of a 3½-minute disco banger.
Daddy Cool sits along with other floor-fillers like ELO’s Mr Blue Sky, Grace Jones’ Slave to the Rhythm and Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill. David Bowie’s Let Dance would get even the most arrhythmic guests, afflicted by centuries of white-on-white breeding, clapping to the beat.
There’s no mention of Bowie famously using the film clip of that song to critique the hundreds of years of racism and pain endured by Indigenous Australians thanks to British colonialism approved by the crown. They must have left that bit out.
However, with the inclusion of Spice Girls, Madness and Tom Jones’ Green Green Grass of Home, the Spotify selection reads more like the tracks played at a standard Irish wedding than at a dusty old coronation.
With reports of plenty of big-name artists turning down the coronation gig, maybe we, the Irish, as a gesture of peace and goodwill, could give Charles a dig out. It seems fitting on the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement to send him some of our greatest musical acts this land has to offer: our wedding DJs. Yes, the gentlemen usually found outside the Pale, playing Wagon Wheel in hotel ballrooms and rural nightclubs across the country, their unbuttoned shirts revealing thick neck chains.
They’re master entertainers who can read the crowd like a newspaper: they know when to throw on a slow song “for all the lovers” but change it up to The Saw Doctors so the father of the bride can show off his jiving moves. If they can get Aunt Bridey up on the floor testing out the limits of her new hip to Maniac, they can get the royal family up doing the Macarena.
If we were feeling really generous we’d send a Joe Dolan tribute act, but I’m not sure we’re there yet as a nation. Maybe one day.