By It's slightly mad that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' 'Red Right Hand' is now almost universally known as Theme From Peaky Blinders, but here we are. Since soundtracking Tommy Shelby's arrival in the first season, it's turned up in various forms and fashions on the show.
Now longstanding Peaky superfan Snoop Dogg has given his own reading of the song, introducing himself as "Snoop Shelby" and tipping his flat cap to the gang. Have a listen here.
To say it's divided opinion is an understatement. For some reason, this fairly standard transposition of 'Red Right Hand' into the classic Snoop mode is simply unacceptable. "Well looks like Nick Cave has something to hate more than the Red Hot Chili Peppers now," quipped killhatsumomo in the comments on YouTube. Cave once memorably dismissed funk-rock's most popular and most regularly nude band: "I'm forever near a stereo saying, 'What the f*** is this garbage?' And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers."
"On a list of things that needed and should’ve been done, this definitely wasn’t part of it. The original had a sense of gravitas and weight," added Peaky fan and - one assumes - diehard hip hop connoisseur Roger Leonard. "This just feels slapdash and hollow."
To be fair, the cockney voices going "red royt 'aaaand" do clunk a bit, and those classic Snoop backing vocals that sound so incredulous - "square??", "bridge??", "mills??", "stacks??" - are a bit overegged.
By the way, if you've been wondering, 'Red Right Hand' has its roots in John Milton's Paradise Lost: "What if the breath that kindled those grim fires, / Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage, / And plunge us in the flames; or from above / Should intermitted vengeance arm again / His red right hand to plague us?" The red right hand is the vengeance and wrath of God, basically, which is very on brand for Tommy Shelby.
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