Prince William, Jon Bon Jovi and Taylor Swift
Of all the bewildering sights you could ever expect to wake up to,
the vision of Prince William performing as a backing singer for Jon Bon
Jovi – wearing a tuxedo, wonkily honking a song about striking union
members with his hands clasped in front of him in the royal family’s
patented “And what is it you do?” pose – is right up there with the best
of them.
However, a little more exploration reveals that Wills isn’t the first
dignitary to wrongly assume that his position of power automatically
makes him a world-class performer. In many ways, his turn last night was
merely the culmination of years of groundwork put in by generations of
unlikely rock’n’rollers before him. Here are some of the best. Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin is, in many ways, the world’s scariest internet meme. Whether he’s posing topless for a selection of startlingly macho photographs
or performing a version of On Blueberry Hill in such an
unapologetically louche way that it makes Dean Martin look like Ian
Curtis, there’s a suspicion that all he really wants from life is to
make the front page of Reddit. Look at him go, though. The panache. The
spoken-word interlude. The cold glare in his eyes that commands the
guests to clap along under pain of death. The man is a star. John Ashcroft
It’s one thing to simply stand next to Taylor Swift and yelp about
being halfway there like Wills, but only a real professional has the
nerve to perform a song of their own creation. And thus former US
attorney general John Ashcroft and his 2002 soft rock epic Let the
Eagles Soar. “This eagle’s place is in the sky,” he sings, his unique
vocal stylings suggesting that he’s standing on a fishing boat in a
storm after a big lunch. “She’s still got a lotta flyin’ to do.” Spoiler
alert: the eagle is America. Hu Jintao
Former Chinese leader Hu Jintao showed that he too was capable of
embarrassing himself in public when he waded onstage and performed a
song called Moscow Nights, backed by a number of middle-aged men who
share his inexplicable lack of shame. Strange stage presence, though.
Look at his arms. They barely move for the entire duration of the song.
If only he’d taken notes from Putin. Silvio Berlusconi
The reasons these performances are funny, of course, is the
juxtaposition of seeing a starched authoritarian try to mimic the loose
sexual energy of a creative performer. That isn’t the case with Silvio
Berlusconi, though. He oozes sexual magnetism whatever he’s doing, so
putting him behind a microphone and asking him to croon an acoustic folk
song just cranks his charisma up to 11. His mouth might be singing, but
his eyes are telling you to wait for the afterparty. Prince Charles
Interestingly, Wills' singing is the first real sign of royalty being willing to perform in public. Princess Eugenie visibly shrank away when Beyoncé shoved a microphone in her face
during a concert this year, and the Queen doesn't sing along to the
national anthem, even though it's all about how brilliant she is. In
fact, all Wills really had to compete with until now was his dad dancing the Hokey Cokey. But politicians? They can't get enough. Barack Obama
And then, obviously, there’s Barack Obama; a man who basically used his singing voice to win an election. When he serenaded Al Green with a version of Let’s Stay Together,
the world went crazy. But he managed to top it by singing Sweet Home
Chicago with Buddy Guy. Or, more realistically, singing one line of
Sweet Home Chicago, trying to hand the microphone back, failing to hand
the microphone back, being forced to sing another line of Sweet Home
Chicago with a mixture of fear and anger in his eyes and then running
away. He’s the best.
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