Playlists: songs about castles and palaces

By Marco den Ouden

In the real world, castles and palaces are places steeped in history, recalling a distant past that can be both nostalgic and an object lesson of a time to which we don’t want to return, a place of class divisions between nobility and commoner. Kings, princes and dukes versus peasants and serfs. 

Yet there is a certain romance about castles and palaces reflected in fairy tales. What little girl doesn’t identify with Disney princesses? Stories like Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and Sleeping Beauty all celebrate a nostalgic sense.

And the concepts surrounding castles, palaces and royalty are all used as metaphors for everyday life, metaphors often reflected in song. 

We start off our set with three real life castles. The first is the famous Chateau de Versailles. First built as a hunting lodge by Louis XIII in 1624, it was greatly expanded by Louis XIV who added two wings and the Hall of Mirrors. Equally magnificent are the Jardins de Versailles covering 2000 acres. Both projects took almost forty years to complete. Today it is a museum and park. Our opening piece, Versailles, is an instrumental commissioned by the museum. The composer and musician Thylacine immersed himself in the sounds of Versailles and incorporated them into his composition. The video brought back a lot of memories of our visit in 2011. 

Our second real life castle is the Alhambra, a palace in Granada, Spain. The Spanish band Medina Azahara sing Al Pie de la Alhambra (at the foot of the Alhambra). 

In 1982 a sneaky fellow named Michael Fagan managed to shimmy up a drainpipe and enter Buckingham Palace to wander the halls eating cheese and crackers. (True story!) He sat on the throne for a while. The three alarms he tripped were dismissed by security as faulty. He finally left and returned a few days later, this time making it to the Royal Bedroom where the queen was asleep. She woke and early reports had Fagan and the Queen having a nice chat, though Fagan later reported she bolted and called security. In any event, two songs about the incident were nominated and I opted for Phillip My Dear, an hilarious fictional account of the event by Trinidadian calypso king Mighty Sparrow. Laced with double entendres, it relates the Queen’s conversation with Prince Phillip after the event. 

He big just like you but younger
He thick just like you but stronger
He lingay (long) like you but harder
He lay, lay like you but badder
A man in my bedroom
He came on the bed, doudou
And I took him for you

From real-life castles we move to the metaphorical. Various entertainment venues are sometimes called palaces or castles. There’s the famous Magic Castle in Los Angeles. And John Gorka sings about the Blues Palace, a nasty place by the sounds of it, a three story “red brick castle” frequented by “used lovers” and “nasty women who will cater your affairs with white lightning and sugar upstairs.”

From that somber note, let’s move on to castles as a metaphor for happy domestic life. Grover Washington and Bill Withers sing about Just the Two of Us, a love song about a couple “building castles in the sky.” The Four Tops tell a man who has abandoned his family that he is the Keeper of the Castle. While he is out complaining about the world’s unfairness, the answer is at his feet. “The leaves on your family tree are callin' you to come home.” Home is where the heart is and where you should be. 

And while real life castles sometimes did double duty as a dungeon or prison as well, the Tower of London being the most famous, Styx sing of being imprisoned by Castle Walls in a metaphorical sense. 

Far beyond these castle walls
Where I thought I heard Tiresias say
Life is never what it seems
And every man must meet his destiny

Tiresias was a clairvoyant oracle of Apollo. 

Meanwhile Stevie Nicks sings of castle walls as a barrier in Ooh My Love. In this case a psychological barrier that a man who loves a woman from afar hopes to breach. “It was a strain on her watching her castles fall down.” 

Next up are the Stonemans singing West Canterbury Subdivision Blues, a song about a man who built his woman a “castle of perma stone” but is distant, often quite literally as he “rode out in quest of song and wine.” He kept “her hanging like grapes on the vine” until “Prince Good Guy rode by on his milk white steed” promising her “love far greater than mine.” He still has his castle but has lost his Queen. 

Rokia Traoré sings of a sand castle by the sea, a metaphor for her hopes and dreams in Château de Sable. 

As some of you may know, I love songs that tell a story. Ballads. So I close with three such stories. The first is a song about a family spending a day on the beach. They build a sand castle and nearby they hear a commotion. A little girl of seven has let her canary out of its cage, wanting to give it its freedom. But the family is too busy trying to keep their castle from being swamped by the waves. Richard Shindell tells the story in There Goes Mavis. “Mavis you can trust me. Now's your big chance Fly away!” the girl cries. What happens next? You’ll have to listen to the song to find out. It’s a compelling story and the first song I knew would make the A List. 

Suzanne Vega tells another compelling story about The Queen and the Soldier. A soldier, weary and sick of fighting in wars he doesn’t understand.

I've watched your palace up here on the hill
And I've wondered who's the woman for whom we all kill
But I am leaving tomorrow and you can do what you will
Only first I am asking you why

The arrogant young queen tells him: “You won't understand, and you may as well not try.” How does it end? Disconcertingly. Listen to the song to find out! 

And we close with a Bedtime Story from country songstress Tammy Wynette. Wynette has a knack for bringing great emotion and passion to her songs and here she tells her daughter a bedtime story. 

Once upon a time, there was a castle
And in this castle lived a King and Queen
And it came to pass, they were both were blessed
By one little blue-eyed princess
With the softest golden curls you've ever seen

The story, of course, is a metaphor for their family. And while it has a happy ending, one wonders if the ending is contrived as she tells her daughter the story still “brings teardrops to my eyes.” 

Interestingly I struggled with whether to start or end the playlist with Thylacine’s Versailles. If I had used it for a closer, the playlist could well have been in exactly the reverse order with minor adjustments to the narrative.  

Alcazar A-List Playlist:

1. Thylacine - Versailles (Maki)

2. Medina Azahara - Al Pie de la Alhambra (Maki)

3. Mighty Sparrow - Phillip My Dear (tincanman)

4. John Gorka - Blues Palace (Fred Erickson)

5. Grover Washington (with Bill Withers) - Just the Two of Us (Nicko)

6. The Four Tops - Keeper of the Castle (Fred Erickson)

7. Styx - Castle Walls (Fred Erickson)

8. Stevie Nicks - Ooh My Love (Fred Erickson)

9. Stonemans - West Canterbury Subdivision Blues (Fred Erickson)

10. Rokia Traoré - Château de Sable (Nicko)

11. Richard Shindell - There Goes Mavis (Suzi)

12. Suzanne Vega - The Queen and the Soldier (tincanman)

13. Tammy Wynette - Bedtime Story (Fred Erickson)

Big Belfry B-List Playlist:

1. Violent Femmes - Outside the Palace (happyclapper)

2. Don McLean - Castles in the Air (bluepeter)

3. New Model Army - Burn the Castle (happyclapper)

4. Funkadelic - March to the Witch’s Castle (TarquinSpodd)

5. Estrella Morente - Alhambra (Maki)

6. Father John Misty - Chateau Lobby # 4 (Vikingchild)

7. The C33s - I am Michael Fagan (Maki)

8. Jorge Ben - Xica da Silva (pejepeine)

9. Hoodoo Gurus - Castles in the Air (Nicko)

10. Freddie King - Palace of the King (Uncleben)

11. Rufus Wainwright - Sanssouci (SweetHomeAlabama)

12. Dennis Brown - Concrete Castle King (Nicko)

13. Elvis Presley - Sand Castles (Nicko)

14. The Wake - Gruesome Castle (vanwolf2)

15. John Cale & Terry Riley - Andalucia (TarquinSpodd)

16. Blue Rodeo - Palace of Gold (Fred Erickson)

17. Dillinger - Buckingham Palace (Nicko)

18. Loreena McKennit - The Lady of Shalott (tincanman)

19. Tommy Dorsey - Have You Got Any Castles Baby? (Nicko)

20. Sy Oliver - Castle Rock (Nicko)

21. Nena - Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendwann (Vikingchild)

22. Paul Weller - Old Castles (Fred Erickson)

23. Adam Green - Castles and Tassels (TarquinSpodd)

24. Blackmore’s Night - Castles and Dreams (Fred Erickson)

25. Kris Kristofferson - Darby’s Castle (Fred Erickson)

Chateaux C-List Playlists:

1. Jon Hopkins - Ritual (Palace) (severin)

2. Los Pekenikes - Frente A Palacio (In Front of the Palace) (pejepeine)

3. Ron Godwin - Where Eagles Dare (BanazirGalbasi)

4. Joe Hisaishi - Merry-Go-Round of Life (BanazirGalbasi)

5. David Arkenstone & Andrew White - The Palace (Fred Erickson)

6. Carbon Leaf - Ghost Dragon Attacks Castle (Fred Erickson)

Guru’s Wild Castle Picks:

1. Chris de Burgh - The Tower His castle was built upon sand, and all he has is a memory, and all he yearns is her hand.

2. Eric Burdon and the Animals - The Black Plague And not all will die, just the poor, for the rich are inside the castle walls.
   

These playlists were inspired by readers' song nominations in response to last week's topic: Find the keys to: songs about castles and palaces. The next topic will launch on Thursday after 1pm UK time.

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