Welcome back to Tunes-A-Million! In case you missed it, this is a virtual book club where I share songs for books I (and hopefully you) read every two weeks.
Our first book was Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan’s The Royal We, a personal all-time favorite of mine. I found this book during my freshman year of high school when I was unbelievably miserable at an all-girls private Catholic school. I randomly checked it out online from my library and read it in one day, pulling out my iPad on the bus, in class, during lunch, and for the entirety of when I told my mom I was doing my homework that night. When I finished, I flipped back to the front page and started reading from the start, beginning my second of many rereads. I now own The Royal We digitally and physically, and my tattered paperback has come with me across the continental United States and to Hawaii, Mexico, and Italy.
At this point, I know Bex Porter, the American exchange student at Oxford, and Prince Nick, the Prince William equivalent of our story (except better). So, naturally, dozens of songs remind me of them and their story. But I’ll just give you a few. If you haven’t read the book, I implore you to stop, buy or rent it, read it, and then come back here. Trust me, it’s worth it.
The first song I’ll share is “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” by Taylor Swift. It’s confirmed in the Royal We universe that Nick’s ringtone is a Taylor Swift song, and I like to think it’s this one. When Nick and Bex meet, Nick is hardened by the limitations of knowing he’s meant to do one thing with his life and has no real direction other than ending up the king of England one day. Bex is the complete opposite, and as they become friends and eventually a couple, her fearlessness starts to rub off on him. They even steal discounted Halloween masks from a convenience store and sneak into a karaoke bar to sing under pseudonyms, demonstrating the sense of freedom that they can bring out in each other. An honorable mention song is Rihanna and Jay-Z’s “Umbrella,” which is the song Bex sings that night.
Gracie Abrams’ “Mean It” sums up one of Nick and Bex’s lowest moments, where they’ve been together for years but have been hiding. They can never dance together while out with their friends or grab a meal at a restaurant, and there’s constant media speculation about Nick’s love life that they can’t address without giving up any sense of privacy. It starts to affect them more than they’d both like to admit until they’re holding onto something already gone. The loudness of the world begins to take over, and it becomes clear that they mean the things they say that they both swore were nothing.
Next is “When The World Stopped Moving” by Lizzy McAlpine. Released in 2021, the song’s moving lyrics and the strong feelings they evoke perfectly capture a pivotal point for Nick and Bex. Now years removed from their university days and broken up after the pressures of the (fictional) royal family and media got too overwhelming, Bex’s father unexpectedly passes. In the aftermath, she finds herself thinking about Nick, only for him to be standing in her kitchen when she returns to London from her dad’s funeral in Iowa. This scene drops my jaw every time I read it, and it always makes me think of this song and the idea of a person’s world stopping, but the one person you wish was with you isn’t.
Last, we have “Background Music” by Maren Morris. From Morris’ third album, the song acknowledges how small we all are in the grand scheme of things, background music in the overall song of the universe. While Nick and Bex likely will be remembered by history in ways that most couples wouldn’t be, thanks to Nick’s place in the royal family’s birth order, it’s clear that no one is forever. Despite the storms they must weather, including falsified cheating scandals and blackmail by the media, they have something real that is worth fighting for. And let me just say, they definitely have to work for it in the sequel: The Heir Affair.
So that’s The Royal We. Obviously, I highly recommend it, as I do all these songs. Next time, I’ll chat about Emily Henry’s “Happy Place.” I LOVE a good rom-com, if you couldn’t tell, and this one is superb.
