Friday's Playlist: The Queen is Dead

Hey! Here's a new playlist for you. It's been a while since we published one of those, partly because we were on vacation and partly because after 137 installments, we were beginning to lose our inspiration. But, yesterday's news prompted us to throw this together to mark the occasion. All of the expected songs are here... The Smiths, the Pistols... We weren't trying to be clever. Enjoy, comment and share.

Elizabeth II, Queen of England for 70 years, died yesterday at the venerable age of 96. Her death is no tragedy: this was an extremely old woman who has lived an unusually long life of extraordinary wealth and privilege, and the institution she represented is laughable at best. In fact, the English monarchy is the noxious relic of a classist, racist, colonialist era. An anti-democratic caste system which is increasingly anachronistic. Again, her passing isn't a tragedy. But she was not only a first-hand witness of the last hundred years of History, she was also uniquely instrumental in the shaping of it. Would English society have been the same without her? Would it have spawned the Beatles? Thatcher? Maybe. Maybe not. 

It never ceases to amaze me how, despite the ever-growing anti-monarchy sentiment in England, how many people are still attached to the institution and how many were attached to her personality. For these people, she was their mother, their teacher, their protector. It is a cult of sorts, isn't it?

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