It can’t have escaped the notice of British readers that this week sees the celebrations for QE2’s Platinum Jubilee, though the rest of you can be forgiven for not noticing, as there are many more important things going on in the world. But I thought I might try it as a theme for this week: I know a few jubilee songs but only a couple of platinum ones, though. After a bit of research my total score of platinum songs is still two, so you’re getting them both! There were several others, and I found a couple of bands with platinum in their name, but they didn’t do much for me. So I’m opening with this:

Not exactly the best song Blondie ever recorded, but it’s a bit of fun, and that fan video has a lot of nice images. This is actually a demo recording, which was remastered for inclusion on a 2001 reissue of the original album, which was called Blondie, for obvious reasons. This was the band’s debut record, released in December 1976, though two of its tracks had previously been singles. None of them did very much chart wise: the album got to #14 in Australia, and a reissue got to #75 in the UK in February 1979, but that was about it. I’m guessing that this one is new to most of you, and I’m playing it as a little piece of pop history.

This next one is also from a huge name, but is also likely to be unknown to you:

A Town Called Jubilee was a track on Elton John’s twenty-ninth album, The Diving Board, released in September 2013. The album was written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin and produced in Los Angeles by T-Bone Burnett, who had produced Elton’s 2010 collaboration with Leon Russell, The Union. It was Burnett who suggested that Elton return to the piano, bass and drums format of his very early years and Elton was quoted at the time as saying the result was “the most exciting solo record I’ve done in a long, long time.” The album harks back to the days of Tumbleweed Connection – still my favourite of all of his records – and shares the same musical feel, around a loose Americana concept. It was also his most successful album for a while, getting to #3 in the UK and #4 in the US. And I liked the nod in Free’s direction too, if you spotted it.

The first song I thought of for this theme is by one of my favourites. You’ll have seen her here several times before! This is an album track, so it is another audio-only clip, but the music speaks for itself:

As the video shows, that was a track on Mary Chapin Carpenter’s fifth album, Stones In The Road, which was released in October 1994. In chart terms this is still her best performer on both sides of the Atlantic, reaching #10 in the US and #26 in the UK, whilst getting to #1 in the US Country chart. Like everything she does, it is full of meaningful, beautifully written songs performed with her lovely, warm voice. I’m unashamedly a big fan – she is a real class act. In the early days of the pandemic she did a series of Songs From Home, in which she played solo versions of some of her amazing back catalogue, with just ‘White Kitty’ and ‘Angus the Wonder Dog’ for company. This was one of those in that series, so as a little bonus here is a link to it, if you would like to see it.

I’ve seen MCC play live, and it is an absolute delight. I really do enjoy a concert by a good female singer-songwriter, and it is no coincidence that I have also seen my next choice too:

Apart from their gender, I think Gretchen Peters shares something with MCC: they both write beautiful, intelligent songs, and are both lovely people in whose musical company an evening just flashes by. Jubilee was a track on her album Blackbirds, released in February 2015. I don’t think it charted in the US but it got to #39 in the UK Albums chart. The album won Gretchen the 2016 award for International Album of the Year from the UK Americana Association and the title track, which she co-wrote with Ben Glover, won the International Song of the Year award. You can probably see why I like both artists!

The sound volume is a little low on this next one, so you might need to crank it up a bit. It’s a great live performance, though, and it felt right to include it for this theme:

I’ve played the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band a couple of times recently, and featured Jeff Hanna’s wife Matraca Berg last week. Jeff wrote this song and takes lead vocal, alongside a hyperactive performance by John McEuen on fiddle. Bayou Jubilee was originally a track on the band’s May 1989 album Will The Circle Be Unbroken: Volume II which, like its predecessor, was a huge collaborative effort with a stellar cast of musicians. They went back a third time in 2002 as well! The album made #95 in the US and #57 in Canada, but also got to #5 and #3 on the respective Country Album listings. I’ve long been a fan of the band, and having first played them just a few weeks ago it feels like I’m making up for lost time!

I don’t know if it is a coincidence, but there seems to be a country/Americana stream developing through this week’s tunes. For my second platinum song here’s another:

Platinum was the title track on Miranda Lambert’s fifth album, which was released in June 2014. Going back to today’s opening track, this song also addresses what it means to be blonde, in many people’s eyes, and is Miranda holding up the middle digit to those who come with preconceptions. Her accent may be a little hard to penetrate, so here’s a sample verse to give you the idea:

What doesn’t kill you
Only makes you blonder
My heels and my hotels
They just got taller
Somethin’ bout platinum irrefutably
Looks as good on records as it does on me

That’s how to say ‘up yours’ in a song, I think! The album made #1 in both the US and Canada, and was also #1 on the US Country chart. It got to #52 in the UK, and also made it to #2 on our Country albums chart. And yes, it did qualify for a Platinum Disc in the US, for sales of over 1m copies – justification that was well-merited, I feel.

For today’s penultimate tune I’m going with another of my favourite singer-songwriters, who also happens to be female. This was a band effort, though, as the audio-only video shows:

Jubilee was the closing track on 10,000 Maniacs’ fourth album, Blind Man’s Zoo, which came out in May 1989. It peaked at #13 in the US and #18 in the UK, probably on the strength of airplay for the two moderate hit singles it spawned, Eat For Two and Trouble Me. It went Platinum in the US and Silver in the UK. The album’s title was inspired by a fictional game from a children’s book, while many of the songs address social and political themes. This track is about religious fanaticism and a racist who burns down a dance hall, in which he had witnessed “a black girl and a white boy kissing shamelessly.” A strong theme, and one which is still just as relevant more than thirty years later. I’ve always loved Natalie Merchant’s voice, and bought all of the band’s albums in the time she was their lead singer.

I’m not what you would call a big fan of our royal family, though I can see that the Queen has given seventy years of service to her country and deserves respect. Not so some of the other members of the family – I’m sure you know who I mean. There have been several records released here in recent weeks to mark the jubilee, but to be honest none of them is very interesting to me. I wanted to close with something suitable, and decided to give you a real treat: some ‘proper,’ i.e. classical, music. This is a well-known piece written especially for a royal occasion, by that typically English composer Georg Friedrich Händel. This is a spectacular performance of his Music for the Royal Fireworks, from the Proms of 2012:

Wikipedia describes the piece thus:

The Music for the Royal Fireworks is a suite for wind instruments composed by Händel in 1749 under contract to King George II of Great Britain, for the fireworks in London’s Green Park on 27 April 1749. The music celebrates the end of the War of the Austrian Succession and the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) in 1748. The work was very popular when first performed and following Handel’s death (in 1759) Mozart called the work a “spectacle of English pride and joy”.

That seems appropriate for this week: I’ve attended concerts at which both this and Händel’s Water Music have been played, and they are fantastic experiences. This seems a good, rousing place at which to close my musical offerings for today.

I’m now off to spend the rest of the week thanking my lucky stars that I have several streaming services available to me, as I do my best to avoid the overload of sycophancy and rubbish ‘entertainment’ shows being provided by our mainstream tv channels. Have a good week, however you spend it 😊