119. Her Majesty
A final bit of impossible serendipity to conclude a decade of perfect accidents
It’s one of my favorite things about the Beatles: that they stuck this tiny little song right on the end of Abbey Road. They had planned to end the album with The End. And it was a perfect way to conclude their impossible career. Except maybe just a little too perfect. But with the purest serendipity, this 23 second snippet—which had been trimmed from the middle of the medley—was left hanging at the end of the tape. And they heard it and realized it was the actual perfect end.
Because, as I’ve noted before, the Beatles were always ready to take down their own sense of self-seriousness. The End is too good, too definitive. Her Majesty is a bit of mischief after the curtain has been drawn and the lights turned up. A reminder that this is all still supposed to be fun.
It’s the sort of thing that would be ridiculous if they had planned it, but because it all happened by accident feels like a bit of cosmic correction.
There’s a nice bit of symmetry in it as well. I Want You (She’s So Heavy) closed side one with an unexpected, mid-riff needle lift. Her Majesty then does the same thing on side two. Since it was never intended to exist outside of the medley, it starts abruptly with the final ringing note from Mean Mr. Mustard and ends just as abruptly, with its own final note still in duty as the opening note to Polythene Pam.1
It’s also a fun bit of trivia that the longest Beatles song ends side one, while the shortest Beatles song ends side two.
When the Beatles were kids, and they went to see films or concerts, it was standard practice to play the national anthem at the end of the show. The BBC also had a closedown routine which involved playing the national anthem at the end of programming each night. This practice was already in decline by the mid to late 60s, but would still have been a very present and understood cultural referent. And certainly many listeners to Abbey Road would have smiled at this twist on the practice. An American corollary might be if a band opened their album with a song that riffed on the idea of the national anthem.
Paul in The Lyrics says that the song was literally about The Queen, and that the joke is that they’re “treating the queen as if she were just a nice girl.” He also notes that the line about her not having much to say “seemed to be true. She doesn’t say much – only the annual Queen’s Speech at Christmas and the opening of Parliament,” which is just a ridiculously Paul thing to say. As is his concluding thought: “I did once perform this song for the queen. I don’t know how to break this to you, but she didn’t have a lot to say.”
Despite Paul’s comments, in my head this was never a song about the Queen. Instead, it’s a song about a girl who sort of holds herself like the queen. Who you refer to as ‘her majesty’ in that specific sort of mocking way that a guy will talk about someone who he actually quite fancies. And it’s always felt quite sweet to me.
Her Majesty was the subject of one of the best wedding toasts I’ve ever heard. The speaker talked about my friend’s love of the Beatles, and then quoted the lyrics to this song. He said that there are plenty of other Beatles songs that might seem more appropriate for a wedding, but that thought something happy and irreverent was actually even better than something romantic. Love is deep and powerful, of course, but actual relationships live mostly in the day-to-day, where the main thing that sustains you is the simple joy of being together and sharing a laugh. I found that really beautiful.
Even a 23 second accident is someone’s favorite Beatles song. Not in spite of it being an accident but precisely because of it.
We did finally got to hear the final note on the super deluxe edition of Abbey Road: