Song of the Day 6/5: XTC, “King for a Day”

While Donald Trump is in England having monarch envy, the lads of XTC had his sort pegged back in the Thatcher era. “King for a Day,” which appears on the band’s 1989 album “Oranges and Lemons, was written and sung by bassist Colin Moulding, the less prolific of the band’s two songwriters (guitarist Andy Partridge was the other). The band began in the days of punk, but by the early ’80s began playing sophisticated pop that, naturally, brought little commercial success but a devoted cult following.

Everyone’s creeping up to the money God
Putting tongues where they didn’t ought to be
On stepping stones of human hearts and souls
Into the land of ‘Nothing for free’

Well, the way that we’re living
Is all take and no giving
There’s nothing to believe in
The loudest mouth will hail the new found way
To be king for a day