Music has, over the past century or so, been a vehicle for celebration, celebrating the good things in life, the special things that make life worth living; love, friendship, happiness. Music has, however, also been used as a means of protest, protesting the ills of life, the injustices of society that make the world an inherently worse place to live in; war, racism, financial inequality.
Woody Guthrie, in 1940, wrote “This Land Is Your Land“, critisising the uneven distribution of wealth in the US, and in 1979 American punk band the Dead Kennedys released “Kill the Poor“, a scathing satirical commentary on the same topic. In 1977, this time in Britain, and in the same year as Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee, the pioneering punk band the Sex Pistols released “God Save The Queen“, also using satire to put their devastatingly clear point across, that the British people do not need the British Royal family, or, as Rotten sings, the “facist regime“.
Listen to “God Save The Queen” by the Sex Pistols below:
While the Pistols’ track is still, by some way, the best known and most successful anti-monarchist song, other artists have voiced their discontent with the royal elite of this nation. The Smiths, in 1986, penned “The Queen Is Dead“, while the Stone Roses, to the tune of the traditional English ballad “Scarborough Fair“, released the short, sweet and unmistakably direct “Elizabeth My Dear“, and then, in 1992, came the Manic Street Preachers with their brutally anti-royalist number “Repeat“.
Listen to “Elizabeth My Dear” below:
And now enter Scottish punk band Gutterblood, with special guest Bonnie Prince Bob, with their contribution to the topic at hand. They have released “Gardyloo“, possibly the most anti-royal, and certainly the most combative of the lot, on the eve of King Charles III’s coronation.
The track holds no bars in insults nor imagery, labelling the current king a “Royal fool”, an”inbred son“, and a “mollycoddled imbecile festooned in golden shite“. His supposed ills are called out as well, implicating that, because “Diana rode an Arab“, he “bumped her off in Paris“, and his ties to Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris are explicitly mentioned.
Bonnie Prince Bob then lyrically reminds His Majesty just why, is his opinion, the royal family is disliked so much by the dispossessed of this country: “Your riches come from workers’ toil and that’s why you’re despised“. The king, in an ongoing scene within the song, has his royal entourage rushed and is then lead to the guillotine and promptly beheaded, thereby allowing Bonnie Prince Bob a triumphant sense of justice.
Watch the music video for “Gardyloo” below:
