This fairy tale is about a so-so looking prince and a naïve teen princess who didn’t live happily ever after. Prince Charles and Princess Diana married July 29, 1981. They would divorce in 1996.
The BBC said the wedding was the highpoint of popularity for the royal family in the 1980s. More than 600,000 spectators lined the parade route and 750 million in 74 countries tuned in to watch the wedding.
The marriage was sure to fail because Prince Charles was in love with Camilla Parker Bowles. But they couldn’t marry because she didn’t pass the Royal Family’s aristocrat test.
Charles and Camilla remained close, too close. He called her every day during his honeymoon, They began their affair in 1986, according to Charles’ biography. The world watched a royal family soap opera for the next ten years, until the divorce. Princess Di, when asked if Camilla was a factor in the divorce, said there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.
Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin wrote the Song of the Day. Reid told Mojo magazine he got the idea from a newspaper article about a guy who got drunk and shot up his girlfriend’s car. When asked by the judge what he learned he said “You can’t make a woman love you if she don’t.”
The songwriters thought it would be a good tune for Linda Ronstadt, but Bonnie Raitt recorded it instead. The song reached number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1991. George Michael’s version in 1997 reached number two in England.
Fridays are when we enjoy a new weekly series that's part history, part trivia, and ALL music. The series features selections from former News-Press editor Sheldon Zoldan's '"Song of the Day." The initiative began as a daily lockdown project on Facebook at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, through which Zoldan highlights how every aspect of life has a connection through music.
