Advertisement

Peaky Blinders: 5 songs that smashed it

image

Get passed the Brummie gangsters, dodgy coppers and one very dangerous priest and Peaky Blinders is a TV show full of some of the best use of music since David Bowie sat down at a piano and abused Ricky Gervais in Extras. The show may be set in the early decades of the 20th Century, but the music is an anachronistic, anarchic mash-up of contemporary artists from Royal Blood to Radiohead.

If you’ve ever wondered how violence, crime and chaps in silly old hats can look like the coolest thing on TV, you must have had the sound turned down during Peaky Blinders. Time to crank the volume and open your ears to the best bits of musical savagery in Peaky Blinders so far.

Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

It all starts here. You can’t make this list without mentioning the all-important theme tune that starts off every episode of the Blinders’ return to our screens. It’s accompanied by iconic imagery, usually of something along the lines of Cillian Murphy and his crew walking in slow motion and smoking, and its lyrics remind of the anti-heroic nature of the Shelby clan. “He’s a ghost, he’s a God, he’s a man, he’s a guru. You’re one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan, designed and directed by his red right hand.”

Come on Over by Royal Blood

With Royal Blood taking the world by storm with their debut album, it was unsurprising to hear them pop up more than once on the Peaky Blinders soundtrack in the second series. Without revealing any spoilers, let’s just say that Come On Over was used as Aunt Polly got some well-deserved and much-needed revenge on a certain scumbag in season 2. Choice lyric: “ Well there’s no God and I don’t really care”.

Out of the Black by Royal Blood

It was too tough to choose between them. There’s been plenty of great music moments in Peaky Blinders, and giving Royal Blood two of the best hardly seems fair. But seeing poor old damaged Arthur Shelby bingeing on cocaine and whisky down at The Garrison, accompanied by Royal Blood’s Out of the Black makes for an especially enticing cocktail. What happens next was nicely hinted at with the lyric, “I’ve got a gun for a mouth and a bullet with your name on it’.

What He Wrote by Laura Marling

While most of the music in Peaky Blinders is there to help make the Shelby boys look even cooler than they already do with their suits and swagger, Laura Marling’s What He Wrote was an emotional heart-tugging moment for Aunt Polly. It’s out of character to some extent, but it scored the scene of Polly bitterly and defiantly waiting for her son to be released from prison perfectly.

Do I Wanna Know? by Arctic Monkeys

It’s a damn shame not to have Radiohead, Jack White, or PJ Harvey on this list, but as important as they have all been to the series, Arctic Monkeys clinched it with this track to see off series 2. While series 3 ended on a downer with Radiohead on the soundtrack, series 2 ended with the Peaky Blinders on top. How to capture that arrogance? There could be no greater way to soundtrack their swagger than this.