‘DUPLICATE SONG. This song is already in your playlist. Do you wish to add it anyway?” These words seemed to appear in front of me whenever I was using a screen during the summer of 2015, as I kept trying to add Sisqo’s Thong Song to our wedding playlist. It didn’t matter whether the flowers wilted, the caterers cancelled or the venue caught fire as long as, post toast, my new husband and I could dance along like idiots to “She had dumps like a truck, truck, truck.”
So I can’t argue that I’m an arbiter of good marital taste, and I’m not suggesting that we should all pledge our troth to a soundtrack of elegant Elgar concertos – but I’m horrified by Spotify’s list of the top 10 wedding songs, and I say that as someone who spent her own wedding day dancing to a song in which 25% of the words are “butt”. According to Spotify’s list, most marrying pairs seem to believe that the music of Ed Sheeran best reflects who they are as a couple.
They make the most sacred, sincere promises of their lives and follow it up by slow dancing to Jason Mraz. Even Jack Johnson’s Better Together gets a look in, because nothing says I will love you forever like the music of a vomitous full moon party in Phuket, perhaps reminding you of how your eyes met across a crowded pile of braying gap yah tossers shouting at you for smudging their still-drying henna tattoos.
To be fair, these are all first dance songs – so we can’t accuse these couples of forcing their guests to attempt to get a decent rhythmic shuffle going to Lonestar. And the first dance should be anything you like. Love is strange, and its timing is terrible. You might have experienced an intense, romantic moment with Heart or Magic FM in the background, and exchanged your first I love yous to the sound of Man, I feel Like a Woman. Owing to circumstances and Italian radio, if I’d married one of my exes we may well have executed our first dance to Too Shy by Kajagoogoo.
That’s my issue with this list. Music, especially pop, is as mad, unpredictable, surprising and glorious as love itself. Don’t tell me that you had an entire, grand sonic catalogue at your disposal and decided that all the tenderness and intensity of your relationship can be captured by a song that was once used by Peter Andre to sell Iceland festive turkey goujons. Even one of those flashmob-style, heavily choreographed routines in which you and your beloved clack your knees in time to Can’t Take My Eyes Off You would be preferable. No matter how much it makes your guests cringe, it indicates that you thought about your choice for more than four seconds.
However, the trouble with one’s own wedding is that it’s now traditional to spend about a year surrounded by well-meaning, forceful, opinionated people who are convinced they have excellent taste, and try to impart that taste to you. It might be a “characterful” registrar, an overbearing caterer or a venue coordinator whose centrepieces once almost featured on BeautifulBohoBridal.com. It might be your mum.
“It’s really important that this day reflects who you are as a couple,” they will say, sometimes while gripping your hands and looking into your eyes so intensely that you worry you may have already married them, by accident, “But I think that you should choose a cheerful fuchsia over the pale blue.
“And you don’t really want chicken for a main, you want swan. And I know you wanted your sister to be maid of honour, but it would probably be more fun and eye-catching for everyone if it were a celebrity. I know Wagner from X Factor?”
By the time you get round to the first dance, you’re so exhausted, angry and bewildered that you can barely listen to music any more, because you’re frightened that the radio DJs are ganging up on you to send you subliminal messages about cake toppers. And one night you come home to your partner, and you both collapse on the sofa and start sobbing uncontrollably at an Ikea advert, which features a whispery, twinkly version of the Buzzcocks’ Ever Fallen In Love sung by some child with a fringe, and you both say “This! This is what we must dance to.”
The tyranny of the Wedding Industrial Complex is driven by the absence of taste – not bad taste, but no taste at all. Everyone who has ever planned a wedding will remember moments where they felt they were being bullied into making sure the day had a particular look and feel. When you get married, you often end up working with fantastic people, but a few will co-opt your “special day” in order to try to create their own advert for their services. (If they ever refer to it as a “special day”, that’s usually the first clue that they are not to be trusted.)
If your wedding feels like an advert, you’re more likely to pick a first dance song that sounds like something from an ad, instead of one you actually like. If you really, truly love a bit of Bublé, go forth and gaze into each other’s eyes. But if something like Fuck Tha Police is the record that has more resonance for you, choose that instead. Your guests will thank you.
