She’s been called a fascist, a parasite and a pretty nice girl who doesn’t have a lot to say. So are all pop songs about the monarch treasonous? And are they really directed at her?
The most famous song about Queen Elizabeth II is called God Save the Queen, and so is the second most famous. The Sex Pistols’ decision to record and release their anti-monarchist screed in time for the silver jubilee was the most brilliant provocation in a career consisting of almost nothing but brilliant provocations. The band had been playing the song for a few months under its original title, No Future, but manager Malcolm McLaren said the phrase sounded “like an ad for a bank”. Much better, he thought, to hijack the national anthem, turn it upside down and hitch a ride on the jubilee. What a coup.
Another thing the Sex Pistols’ hit shares with the national anthem is that it is not about Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor but a symbol of the British state. For John oung tiget Lydon, the Queen is not just synonymous with “the fascist regime”, she’s “not a human being” at all. The song soon spirals away from the ruler towards the resentfully ruled, “the flowers in the dustbin”. Britain was so fraught in 1977 – politically, socially, economically – that to many young people, the patriotic jubilee festivities were a bitter farce of nostalgia and denial, like bunting on a bomb site. As Jon Savage writes in England’s Dreaming: “Here was the ultimate statement of pop’s everlasting present, just at the moment when the masses were celebrating the past.”
For although the pound may tumble, although panic fills the air
Although government may crumble, and the cupboards nearly bare
Though the stairs begin to rattle, and the rats begin to stare
She enfolds in mystic unity her subjects everywhere
And we know we’re safe from harm while nanny’s there
