When Princess Diana died 25 years ago, Radio 1 replaced its entire playlist. Why did it decide that a 10-minute ambient epic was the best choice for a royal elegy?
What was the soundtrack to Diana, Princess of Wales’s death? Surely Elton John’s Candle in the Wind 1997? After all, it’s the biggest-selling UK single of all time. But no: if you were listening to Radio 1 – and back in late summer 1997, tens of millions still were – the musical backdrop to Diana’s death was downbeat trip-hop and ambient techno. It was Apollo 440. It was the Sabres of Paradise. It was the Aloof. It was chillout music.
Radio 1 had long been sensitive about its playlists at moments of national crisis: during the first Gulf war, for example, Phil Collins’s In the Air Tonight was one of many songs banned for somewhat tangential reasons. At the point of Diana’s death, there was already a sense that the station’s “Obituary CDs” (which then were literally a set of compilation CDs of tasteful instrumental music, kept in a cupboard in each studio) needed an upgrade. Not too upbeat, not too bleak and, crucially, lacking any lyrics that could be interpreted as offensive, chillout was the perfect music to accompany a national tragedy.
