The Tragically Hip:  Wheat Kings

artists:  The Tragically Hip

songwriters:  The Tragically Hip

date released:  1992 by The Tragically Hip

The song "Wheat Kings" is mainly about Canadan David Milgaard.  Milgaard, who was from Saskatchewan, was wrongly convicted of raping and killing a woman and served over 20 years in prison before being released. 

"Wheat kings"  are the nicknames for those giant wheat silos you see on the prairies on farms and such. 

Gord Downie, leader of The Tragically Hip, probably got the inspiration for the song title from the Brandon Wheat Kings, the Western Hockey League team in Brandon, Manitoba. 

In terms of "Wheat kings and pretty things", the Pretty Things were a band that the Hip used to listen to a lot when they were first starting out in 1983, and they covered a few Pretty Things songs in their sets way back in the beginning, so this line is probably a tribute to that band. The entire lyric "wheat kings and pretty things/lets just see what the morning brings" was probably written as if Milgaard himself was saying this as he's looking out his jail cell window, out at the prairies, hence the "wheat kings and pretty things" and his undying hope that he'll be exonerated, and his optimism towards this end: "Let's just see what the morning brings."