[8] Benjamin Piekut wrote in Henry Cow: The World Is a Problem that in contrast to Hodgkinson's previous compositions, the song-structure of "Nine Funerals of the Citizen King" introduces repetition, which prevents the music from "wandering without aim".
[10]Matthew Martens wrote in Perfect Sound Forever that "Nine Funerals of the Citizen King" was Henry Cow's first political statement, and they sing "dourly (and cryptically) of the gulf separating democracy's pomp and spectacle from the real-life horrors of consumer capitalism.
"[1] Piekut stated that Hodgkinson's "lyrical reference to Gertrude Stein in the arresting 'chorus' section" was a turning point in Henry Cow's approach when they moved from "a zany fascination with the historical avant-garde of Dada and surrealism" to "a more sober, Marxist analysis of contemporary society and a Brechtian relationship to artistic production.
"[3] Paul Stump suggested in The Music's All that Matters: A History of Progressive Rock that Dadaism is still at the heart of the song: "Down beneath the spectacle of free" refers to Debord, and "Said the Mama of Dada as long ago as 1919" alludes to the year the movement was born in Zürich.
[14] Commenting on the song some 36 years after he wrote it, Hodgkinson said, "the idea of 'the society of the spectacle' expressed ... a playful, theatrical, surrealist dimension which suggested montage and word games.