The Wedding Playlist

[Note: although most of this was written at the time, I did not finish it and publish it until some months later. I have kept the original date.]

It has been almost a fortnight since Chloe and I married. In the meantime, we've been on a honeymoon to Amsterdam and Brussels, which I will write a little about in a different post, but I have been meaning to memorialise our wedding playlist on the blog. We talked a lot about this in the weeks and months before the wedding, in a desultory fashion, until we sat down with some wine one Friday night and thrashed it out. (‘Surprisingly coherent in the circumstances,’ observed the eldest, reflecting on the discussions earlier today.)

We wanted the playlist to reflect us: our lives as a couple and as a family. As Chloe noted in her speech at the post-wedding dinner, many prominent figures today think not only that such families should not exist but that they do not exist. Our relationship has, however, always been on the basis of full transparency, that I am trans (as well as going blind), even if outward manifestations have varied and evolved over time, as have queer and trans identities in wider society. This playlist also reflects our shared political lives and our European identities and experiences to which we stubbornly cling.

The playlists come in two parts. The first, and longest, was for guests waiting for the ceremony to begin. The second is from the actual ceremony, specifically aisle music, the signing of the register and exit music. Because of uncertainties over timings, we included more tracks than we ended up using. I have putd the unused tracks in an appendix. The actual, rather than theoretical, musical shape worked really well.

Finally, because we left it to the children to manage the music on the day, it was actually played through a certain streaming service that will remain nameless, but we made a point of ensuring we already owned or bought the tracks in question.

The Waiting Playlist

This was always intended to be potentially open-ended. It actually went longer than expected, but ended opportunely.

1. Lou Reed, ‘Perfect Day’, from Transformer (1972)

This was first on Chloe's list. I still can't quite forget (or forgive) the BBC ident that used it, but it fits the day well. We might have used ‘Walk on the wild side’, but I am a bit ambivalent about that song, and it seemed a bit incongruous for a wedding of any flavour!

2. Edith Piaf, ‘La vie en rose’ (1947)

We talked about using ‘Je ne regrette rien’, which is truthful but perhaps predictable. So we thought about other Piaf songs. This seemed particularly relevant because of the film with the allusive title (Ma vie en rose, 1997), a film about a trans childhood. I have to confess, though, that I still haven't actually seen it. I wasn't in a very good place at the time.

We both love Piaf and wish to honour her as a tough, professional woman.

3. Jacques Brel, ‘Amsterdam’ (1964/1966)

Another from the chanson tradition, and this is in part a nod to our honeymoon in Amsterdam and Brussels. On a spur of the moment decision, the last place we visited in Brussels was the Jacques Brel Foundation, which is a wonderful archive.

We're in love with this song in many variants. We considered the David Bowie version, which is not one of his better-known tracks, but this is another choice where our European ideals come to the fore, including the linguistic dimension (however terrible our French is in practice).

There is something of a louche feel to these tracks. We are far too mundane for this to reflect our own milieu, but you can read this as either an expression of our desire to be cooler than we are, or as an ironic commentary on how some people see our lives (and have told us so).

4. Peggy Seeger, ‘The first time’, from Teleology (2025)

Folk, in mainly UK and US forms, is a recurring interest of ours. I spent a long time thinking about whether to shoehorn Billy Bragg or Leonard Cohen into the playlist (‘Last year's man’ was long on my list, but we ruled it out in case the religious imagery was problematic for the Registry Office.) Chloe put her foot down about Matty Groves (e.g. by Fairport Convention) as being wildly inappropriate.

In the end, there was no debate: this is an utterly gorgeous song by a queer icon. Famously, this was written for Peggy Seeger by her husband Ewan McColl, but Seeger has been on a journey, and as part of the journey she has returned to this song on more than one occasion, as she related recently in a talk with Tom Robinson on 6Music during this year's Pride month. This is her final version, from this year's farewell album. The voice is now more fragile, and the swooping vocals of the original version are no more, but in their place is a delicacy and suggestion of rich experience. As women of a certain age who have been on our own queer journey, this speaks to us.

5. Kae Tempest (featuring Neil Tennant), ‘Sunshine on Catford’ (2025)

Kae Tempest is arguably the only unambiguously trans artist on this list, which is perhaps surprising (although I will certainly claim Lou Reed from his Transformer period, and I will happily restate the historical contingency of trans identities and practice). We talked about including both Sophie and Anoni. I really wanted Anoni's haunting version of ‘Motherless child’ from her Glastonbury set this year, but we couldn't source a recording of it. Sophie's ‘Bipp’, which is thematically more appropriate than Anoni's track, fell at the final hurdle because I felt it was just too jarring, both in terms of the surrounding music, and given the audience we were expecting. Chloe was more bullish, but we needed to cut the list and so it went.

The only question we had about Kae Tempest was which of his tracks we would choose. I think I am in awe of Kae Tempest for his articulacy, honesty and courage, and this has only increased as he has addressed his transition more and more explicitly in his work. In his recent album, he has addressed physical transition in ways that no other artist has come close to doing. If you want to know what it is to transition, listen to Kae Tempest. As a trans woman, it always makes me cry when I read or hear trans men talk about what physical transition means to them. Their joy at the very things from which I am fleeing is at once both utterly strange and utterly familiar. It is a wondrous thing, in the fullest sense. I hear of voices trying to atomize us and drive wedges between us, but this is a uniquely shared trans bond, which cannot be undone.

We went for one of the recent tracks, but not one in which physical transition was the topic, because that was only the background for the wedding, not the event itself. He has always written powerfully and deeply about the experience of love and desire, and this is one such song, which pulses and throbs in an expression of mutuality that feels as personal and authentic as anything he has done. It also features Neil Tennant from Pet Shop Boys, whom we would have loved to squeeze in, since they have been such a part of our life, and the conjunction was utterly persuasive.

The offspring declined to admit any knowledge of Kae Tempest, so Chloe played them some. Well, a lot, really. ‘I didn't realise you liked this kind of thing,’ was one comment, but I am still unsure whether this was a positive or negative observation. This may also have been the context for the further comment that they thought we were only into 80s music, given our insistence on playing it at them on Friday nights. This is, dear reader, an exaggeration, but see the Appendix for some possibly corroborating evidence.

Talking of the 80s, the title of this track clearly nods to The Proclaimers. Perhaps, as new Scots, this is a tad disloyal of us, but given that the band (whom we saw at the Wicker Man festival back in the day) very publicly supported the transphobic and anti-feminist Alba party, it is no more than they deserve.

6. Soft Cell, ‘Say hello, wave goodbye’, from Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret (1981)

We didn't expect the playlist to make it this far, but the music concluded during this song, which was wonderfully serendipitous. It has been one of our songs since the moment we met. The lines, ‘I tried to make it work | you in a cocktail skirt and me in a suit | well it just wasn't me,’ seemed to encapsulate our relationship so perfectly. I remember being slightly miffed to discover (when I got out more) that this was a bit of a queer cliché, but that doesn't make it untrue.

The Ceremony Playlist

The Aisle Song: Frankie Goes to Hollywood, ‘The Power of Love’ (1984)

Chloe wanted this song for the aisle. I said, ‘Oh great, the Hooded Claw!’ Chloe was slightly startled by this response, but reassured when Hollie Johnson's intonation of ‘I'll protect you from the Hooded Claw | Keep vampires from your door’ was barely audible in the version she was listening to. As it turned out, the speakers in the room transmitted it all too clearly. It is a really short aisle in the room we were using, so we barely made it through the introduction: portentous bells and chimes were perfect as we trolled up the aisle.

And the incantation!

The Perils of Penelope Pitstop were a staple of British TV in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and, like so much of the period, specialised in queer tropes and performative gender. For younger readers, this cartoon is a pastiche of elements from early silent cinema, with the eponymous heroine constantly being subjected to implausible murder plots by her guardian, masquerading as the evil villain, The Hooded claw, complete with cape, hat and eye-mask. And the heiress Penelope, well, wore so much pink that we had no need of Judith Butler growing up! As I recall, a pink jumpsuit, driving helmet and goggles were de rigeur. Oh yes, and she was repeatedly non-rescued or accidentally-rescued by a bunch of private detectives, the Anthill Mob, crammed into a 1920s-era car (Chugaboom, I think), and a fine example of heroic, puissant masculinity.

Anyway, leaving all that aside, it is difficult to convey for a modern audience just how significant Frankie were in the 1980s. It is not as if we had not had queer acts before, with varying degrees of openness and success, but Frankie were so, er, frank, confrontational and successful that they were impossible to ignore, and the banning of Relax from Radio 1 just amplified the impact. I still think Two Tribes is one of the truly great Cold War songs. Oh yes, and they do a mean torch song.

Signing and Departure: Grace Petrie, ‘The Losing Side’, from Connectivity (2021)

We had a couple more tracks lined up to follow, plus a dedicated exit song, but in the end none of these were needed (see Appendix).

Grace Petrie is, to my mind, one of the most important voices in contemporary music. Often styling herself as a protest singer, especially when The Guardian wheels out its periodic lament for the disappearance of that trade, her critique of post-Brexit Britain from a left and queer perspective has only become more powerful and insistent. You can see why the Graun studiously ignores her. She is also very funny and touching, and has some beautiful love songs.

We talked long about which song, and which type of song, to choose. The predictable option, perhaps, would have been ‘Pride’ or the trans anthem ‘Black Tie’. But in the end, we went for ‘The Losing Side’, a response to the murder of Sarah Everard and to the police's aggressive response to peaceful protest, culminating in the Metropolitan Police's assault on the vigil for the victim of one of their officers. It is not an optimistic song. It almost always makes me cry. But it is a song of defiance and persistence and resolution. As such, it captures both the long history of the feminist struggle and how minorities can become targets as others stand by. This is certainly the spirit in which we had decided to marry, and yet it was, on this occasion, strangely triumphant. It was a moment of joy.

Appendix: The Missing Music

From the pre-ceremony list:

7. Eurhythmics, ‘Sweet Dreams (are Made of This)’ (1983)

This is here for two reasons. First is the unquestionable goddess that is Annie Lennox. Second is the upbeat tempo and impetus into the main event. It didn't happen, but itwould have been good

8. Sinead O'Connor, ‘Nothing compares 2U’ (1990)

Another iconic female singer, taken too soon: there was no question that we wanted her for this list, but we did have some problems with sequencing. It might have been a bit of a downer to end with, especially after the previous track, but it says a lot about how we feel about each other. I know it is technically a break-up song, as also is the Soft Cell track (sort of), but the underlying emotion is entirely relevant to desperate love in all contexts. It always makes me cry, still. Of course, this is a Prince composition, and I love Prince, but O'Connor's account of her meeting with him is very dispiriting to me. In any case, as with Peggy Seeger's interpretations above, this version is quintessentially her own, a haunting expression of a woman's desire.

Signing

Joan Baez, ‘We shall overcome’ (1963)

Continuing the folk/protest theme from Grace Petrie, this is a classic of the civil rights, human rights and peace movements, and again sung by an iconic performer, who continues to be an inspiration. It is unfortunately particularly relevant today, as the gains of those movements are being rolled back and threatened.

The Clash, ‘Guns of Brixton’, from London Calling (1979)

As we move towards the end, a more uptempo piece, if not a more upbeat one. This song has become a bit of a mantra for us, especially the lines, ‘When they kick in your front door, how you gonna come, | with your hands on your head or the trigger of your gun?’ As we contemplate the increasingly hostile environment for queer and trans people in this country, and the very dark places to which the US has gone, and in whose footsteps we appear to be treading, I hope it is not too appropriating to see the parallels with another context of discrimination and state brutality.

Exit Music: Heart, ‘Alone’ (1987)

I think hair metal (or hair-adjacent music) is one of our guilty pleasures, and we have caused alarm and distress by requesting this track at numerous wedding discos and cavorting on the dancefloor, in more recent years to the mortification of the offspring. It is quintessentially the song we most associate with weddings.

In the event, neither of us had the lace gloves or fascinator to do this full justice, so perhaps it is just as well that this is practically the only family wedding we haven't manage to have this played at!