When the royal family say ‘jump’, you jump: George Ezra on tweaking his lyrics
The 29-year-old performed during the Platinum Party At The Palace but was asked to change the lyrics to one of his tracks.
British singer-songwriter George Ezra has said “you don’t question it” when asked why he changed the lyrics to his song Green Green Grass during his Platinum Jubilee performance.
The 29-year-old performed the song during the Platinum Party At The Palace on June 4, held outside Buckingham Palace in celebration of the Queen’s 70 years on the throne.
However, the lyrics “Green green grass, blue blue sky, you better throw a party on the day that I die”, were edited to remove the reference to dying.
Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Ezra said: “When you’re playing for the royal family, when they say ‘jump’, you jump, you don’t question it.”
Adding: “My take on it was that it was going to make it more obvious to change it, and the thing is it kind of turned out that way.
“It’s the thing that I get asked about a lot now and I just say: ‘Well, I wasn’t going to fight back, was I?'”
He added: “But for me, the song is kind of a celebration of life, is how I would read it. I would never see it as a funeral manifesto.”
The song was released as a single in April ahead of Ezra’s third album Gold Rush Kid, which is currently on track to reach number one on the UK official albums chart.
Speaking to presenters Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley about the album’s success, Ezra said: “I’ve not been paying attention to it. It’ll be my third time if it comes through.”
Explaining the album, Ezra said: “Gold Rush Kid is the album. I released it on Friday, we’ve been playing shows around the country since.
“Doing in-stores and meeting people, it all feels very good, especially after the last few years.”
Ezra has previously scored two number one albums with his debut record Wanted On Voyage, released in 2014 and his second album Staying At Tamara’s, in 2018.
He is also preparing to release a documentary titled End To End, which follows a journey Ezra made in 2021, walking 1,200 miles over 95 days from Land’s End in southern England to the most northern tip of the UK mainland, John O’Groats.
Speaking about the film, he said: “The whole plan was that we would take this journey, and we would document it and it would be a kind of making of the album, was the plan.
“There was three months to decide in 2020 and then, of course, we couldn’t do that.
“And by the end of 2020, I had finished writing the album, so at this point we had directors, producers, and most importantly investors, that all came knocking on the door going: ‘You owe us a film.’
“And so then we had to reimagine how we do the walk and then we came up with the idea of visiting musicians while we walked.”
Meeting musicians along the way, he discovers and reconnects with the country after months of isolation, while reflecting on his relationship to his music and live performance.
End To End will also feature acoustic sets and tracks from Gold Rush Kid and offer an insight into Ezra’s process of bringing his third album to life.
The London launch event of the documentary will include an intimate live performance by Ezra which will be broadcast out to cinemas across the country on August 29.
