King Charles’ new playlist includes many songs from former British colonies : NPR

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Should we call him King Charles, or maybe DJ Royal Chuck? King Charles III has launched an Apple Music playlist of his favorite songs. It dropped today for Commonwealth Day, which is celebrated among a group of mostly former British colonies. NPR’s Lauren Frayer reports from London.

LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: In a video posted to social media, King Charles sits at a big wooden desk at Buckingham Palace, with a vintage radio on-air sign lit up, talking about his love of disco, reggae and Afrobeats.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

KING CHARLES III: It has that remarkable ability to bring happy memories.

FRAYER: Then the video cuts to a military marching band outside the palace playing Bob Marley.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

CHARLES III: So this is what I particularly wanted to share with you, songs which have brought me joy.

FRAYER: This playlist fit for a king is called “The King’s Music Room.” The palace says it’s the soundtrack of King Charles’ life from 1930 standards to Kylie Minogue.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

CHARLES III: The song is “The Loco-Motion,” and this is music for dancing.

(SOUNDBITE OF KYLIE MINOGUE SONG, “THE LOCO-MOTION”)

CHARLES III: Again, it has that infectious energy, which makes it, I find, incredibly hard to sit still.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “THE LOCO-MOTION”)

KYLIE MINOGUE: (Singing) Everybody’s doing a brand new dance now.

ALEXIS PETRIDIS: I find it quite hard to conjure the image. And when I do conjure the image of him listening to this stuff, I find it quite disturbing (laughter) so, you know.

FRAYER: Alexis Petridis, pop music critic at The Guardian, says he has some doubt as to whether the king really made this playlist himself. It is kind of hard to imagine Charles and Camilla rocking out to “Crazy In Love” by Beyonce or “Hot Hot Hot” by Arrow, but maybe not.

PETRIDIS: Who knows what goes on behind the doors of Buckingham Palace? Maybe it’s a nonstop party soundtracked (ph) by Afrobeats, you know (laughter)?

FRAYER: The occasion for the King’s debut playlist is Commonwealth Day. And so it’s no coincidence that many of the songs are from those 56 countries with past ties to the British Empire – ties, though, which have frayed in recent years amid calls for reparations for slavery and other injustices that were part of the empire.

CORINNE FOWLER: It’s a bit more of a fraught relationship now than it ever was.

FRAYER: Corinne Fowler is an expert on colonialism at the University of Leicester in England. She recalls how when the king’s son and daughter-in-law, Kate and William, tried to make a similar gesture of goodwill with a tour of Commonwealth nations in the Caribbean three years ago…

FOWLER: They had a lot of crowds of people demonstrating and really pushing for reparations.

FRAYER: Barbados had recently dropped the king as its head of state. Other countries say they’ll follow suit. And so the idea of a playlist about the Commonwealth coming from the King…

FOWLER: Well, I can’t speak for the citizens of Commonwealth nations, obviously, but I imagine it feels like it’s glossing over a lot of these ever-deepening fault lines.

FRAYER: She says it might sound a little tone-deaf. In his defense, the 76-year-old monarch says his playlist reflects the, quote, “wonderfully diverse tapestry of the modern Commonwealth” – and beyond, actually, because it includes a handful of acts like Beyonce and Diana Ross from America, which managed to escape its royal ties quite a long time ago. Lauren Frayer, NPR News, London.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “CRAZY IN LOVE”)

BEYONCE: (Singing) Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, oh, no, no.

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