The coronation has been a controversial event at best, with multiple artists including Adele, Elton John, Harry Styles and The Spice Girls all declining to perform at the Coronation Concert, set to take place on 7th May 2023. Excuses ranged from scheduling conflicts to simply “no comment“, sparking discussions around the popularity of the Royal Family and what it would mean for the PR of the celebrities who seemed to be in support of the Royals.

Whilst Nick Cave was not invited to perform at the Coronation Concert, he did attend the coronation itself. Cave’s newsletter, The Red Hand Files, included his defense of his acceptance of an invitation.

He wrote, “I am not a monarchist, nor am I a royalist, nor am I an ardent republican for that matter; what I am also not is so spectacularly incurious about the world and the way it works, so ideologically captured, so damn grouchy, as to refuse an invitation to what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age. Not just the most important, but the strangest, the weirdest.”

Cave went on to attempt to define his relationship to the Royals, saying, “When I watched the Queen’s funeral on the television last year I found, to my bafflement, that I was weeping myself as the coffin was stripped of the crown, orb and sceptre and lowered through the floor of St George’s Chapel.”

He continued, “I guess what I am trying to say is that, beyond the interminable but necessary debates about the abolition of the monarchy, I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the royals – the strangeness of them, the deeply eccentric nature of the whole affair that so perfectly reflects the unique weirdness of Britain itself. I’m just drawn to that kind of thing – the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefyingly spectacular, the awe-inspiring.”

A fan wrote to Cave, saying, “Nick Cave going to the coronation??! What would the young Nick Cave have thought of that?!” with Cave replying, “as for what the young Nick Cave would have thought – well, the young Nick Cave was, in all due respect to the young Nick Cave, young, and like many young people, mostly demented, so I’m a little cautious around using him as a benchmark for what I should or should not do. He was cute though, I’ll give him that. Deranged, but cute.”

Prior to attending, Cave’s final comment on the matter was “So, with all that in mind, I am looking forward to going the Coronation. I think I’ll wear a suit.“

Nick Cave was one of many celebrities in attendance, including Katy Perry, Lionel Richie, Dame Emma Thompson and Dame Judi Dench.

My #idol set is a little different today #CoronationConcert pic.twitter.com/827k7Lq9hw

— KATY PERRY (@katyperry) May 8, 2023

Lionel Richie says he feels like ‘kid at Christmas time’ ahead of the coronation concert, adding that the performance will be ‘a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’

Latest: https://t.co/gELyhGXZyw pic.twitter.com/0Rk8jPEdWZ

— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 3, 2023

The celebrations are set to continue until 8th May, culminating in The Big Help Out. Further details can be found here.

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: