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Australian Republic Movement Ad
How do you remind Australians on Australia Day that they should really be a republic after all?
By getting them to sing the Australian Royal National Anthem in an ad.
You know the one.
‘God save the Queen’: Royal anthem gets republican twist in new ad campaign
https://youtube.com/watch?v=2RQ_M55Jhaw
Good work, Australian Republican Movement. You didn’t even need the people in the ad to stumble over the words (“something and glorious”). The incongruity is already plenty obvious.
(You might want to update your HTML title on your website, though, to reflect your rebranding to “Australian Republic Movement”…)
The YouTube comments, btw, indicate that the ad did not have the same resonance with monarchists that it has had with me…
Umm, well, no. We here in Republic Exporters, Inc. have a national anthem that must take the cake for combined jingoism and unsingability. What kind of a national song is it that only professional voices can manage? And we have such a wonderful unofficial anthem too: “America, America / God mend thine every flaw / Confirm thy soul in self-control / Thy liberty in law.” That’s my kind of patriotism. (It’s not perfect: it erases Native Americans among other problems. But the explicit religiosity isn’t one of them: it’s totally in decorum for an intensely religious country like this one.)
And for that good old 16th century tune (a galliard, really; I can see couples solemnly dancing to it), we have “My country, ’tis of thee”, which is crap as poetry, I mean “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing”, what kind of anacoluthon is that? But at least it keeps us in touch with something older than ourselves, which is not exactly a Bad Thing. (And I, being a weirdo, can sing every word of the Royal Anthem without problems, and I secretly admire anybodies who can put “Confound their politics / Frustrate their knavish tricks” into a national anthem.)
How did people sing Anacreon in Heaven back in the day? I suspect this was a Georgian thing: my superficial look at 18th century rounds, when I was a teenager, unearthed a lot of wide tessituras.
Honestly, the tune isn’t hard or unpleasant to sing. I’d say it’s the opposite — that wild swooping is fun! It’s just hard to sing well. All of this adds up to a great drinking song if you ask me.
For one thing, AiH is sung much more briskly, and if you miss a note or two, it’s not a big deal. The SSB is sung fairly slowly and with more ornament.