Prince William and six other unexpected stage invasions

We still can't quite come to terms with the sight of Wills sharing a microphone with Jon Bon Jovi and Taylor Swift. But plenty of dignitaries have wowed us with their singing and dancing before him. Perhaps we should get used to it

• Prince William sings Living on a Prayer with Jon Bon Jovi and Taylor Swift
• Open thread: what should Prince William sing next?

Of all the bewildering sights you could ever expect to wake up to, the vision of Prince William performing as a backing singer for Jon Bon Jovi – wearing a tuxedo, wonkily honking a song about striking union members with his hands clasped in front of him in the royal family’s patented “And what is it you do?” pose – is right up there with the best of them.

However, a little more exploration reveals that Wills isn’t the first dignitary to wrongly assume that his position of power automatically makes him a world-class performer. In many ways, his turn last night was merely the culmination of years of groundwork put in by generations of unlikely rock’n’rollers before him. Here are some of the best.

Vladimir Putin is, in many ways, the world’s scariest internet meme. Whether he’s posing topless for a selection of startlingly macho photographs or performing a version of On Blueberry Hill in such an unapologetically louche way that it makes Dean Martin look like Ian Curtis, there’s a suspicion that all he really wants from life is to make the front page of Reddit. Look at him go, though. The panache. The spoken-word interlude. The cold glare in his eyes that commands the guests to clap along under pain of death. The man is a star.

It’s one thing to simply stand next to Taylor Swift and yelp about being halfway there like Wills, but only a real professional has the nerve to perform a song of their own creation. And thus former US attorney general John Ashcroft and his 2002 soft rock epic Let the Eagles Soar. “This eagle’s place is in the sky,” he sings, his unique vocal stylings suggesting that he’s standing on a fishing boat in a storm after a big lunch. “She’s still got a lotta flyin’ to do.” Spoiler alert: the eagle is America.

Former Chinese leader Hu Jintao showed that he too was capable of embarrassing himself in public when he waded onstage and performed a song called Moscow Nights, backed by a number of middle-aged men who share his inexplicable lack of shame. Strange stage presence, though. Look at his arms. They barely move for the entire duration of the song. If only he’d taken notes from Putin.

The reasons these performances are funny, of course, is the juxtaposition of seeing a starched authoritarian try to mimic the loose sexual energy of a creative performer. That isn’t the case with Silvio Berlusconi, though. He oozes sexual magnetism whatever he’s doing, so putting him behind a microphone and asking him to croon an acoustic folk song just cranks his charisma up to 11. His mouth might be singing, but his eyes are telling you to wait for the afterparty.

Interestingly, Wills' singing is the first real sign of royalty being willing to perform in public. Princess Eugenie visibly shrank away when Beyoncé shoved a microphone in her face during a concert this year, and the Queen doesn't sing along to the national anthem, even though it's all about how brilliant she is. In fact, all Wills really had to compete with until now was his dad dancing the Hokey Cokey. But politicians? They can't get enough.

And then, obviously, there’s Barack Obama; a man who basically used his singing voice to win an election. When he serenaded Al Green with a version of Let’s Stay Together, the world went crazy. But he managed to top it by singing Sweet Home Chicago with Buddy Guy. Or, more realistically, singing one line of Sweet Home Chicago, trying to hand the microphone back, failing to hand the microphone back, being forced to sing another line of Sweet Home Chicago with a mixture of fear and anger in his eyes and then running away. He’s the best.