"You'll Never Walk Alone"

 

Liverpool's You'll Never Walk Alone has everything a great football song needs: it expresses camaraderie, perseverance ("Walk on through the rain/Though your dreams be tossed and blown"), hope, and a reasonably catchy, even melodramatic tune that is, in fact, not at all easy to sing.*  It is the song of the underdog. But it requires a great stadium. And when song by the Kop at Anfield Road, after a miraculous comeback against a very fine side with the greatest living player (Messi), it is near perfection. 

Unlike many other stadium hymns, which can be downright menacing or seem like a call to war, Liverpool's You'll Never Walk Alone has a melancholic flavor, which also recalls tragedy (Heizel, 1985; and Hillsborough 1989, which was made worse by police treachery). Man United's Glory Glory -- a song I like much less -- redeems itself by recalling obliquely tragedy (busby babes in days gone by).+ 

As an aside, you may think my claim here is far-fetched. But it helps explain why Queen's We Will Rock You, despite its popularity among marketing types surrounding American sporting events, and We are the Champions, which are both operatic, dramatic, and easy to sing in a stadium are not iconic club songs.

As is well known, Liverpool's song dates from the Bill Shankly era; it was adopted from a 1963 single by Gerry and the Pacemakers, a local, Merseyside band (see the clip here). I am not alone in thinking it makes for a great fan song because it was, famously, picked up by Celtic (soon after) and by Borussia Dortmund. When Liverpool and Dortmund play part of the fun is hearing the fans join in. 

When I was a kid, an Ajax fan, I was always a bit envious. We had Ajax wint de wereldcup, by The Specials (a largely forgotten band) dating from its first golden age.  It was written for the team during its legendary run toward (yes) the club world cup. But unlike the great hymns, the song is anticipatory and festive. Of course, the song was notably better when sung by its fans because it evoked what seemed like forever bygone days. Interestingly it has not stuck; these days (since 2008) the fans sing Three Little Birds (yes Bob Marley).

You may think that 1963 is pretty recent for what seems like a well-worn tradition. While the history of club football has roots in the development of leisure for the urban proletariat of the nineteenth century, it is easily forgotten, however, that international club football (or Soccer for my American readers) as a mass phenomenon is, in fact, relatively recent (post-world war II). Reliable air travel and TV conspired to produce it. Real Madrid won their first (of 13) European Cup (the predecessor to the Champion's League) in 1955--there are people alive who came of age with Di Stefano (and Benfica's Eusébio). 

Neil Levy quite rightly suggested that the single greatest football song moment occurred with Hibernian Fans singing The Proclaimers' anthem Sunshine on Leith after beating Rangers in dramatic fashion at (a half empty) Hampden Park in the Scottish Cup final in 2016 (see below, including the honor guard of horses on the field).++  In fact, the example proves the rule: Hibs were the ultimate underdog; the song was written by a local band as a fan hymn, and it is especially difficult to sing. (See here for an interesting essay on the back-story.)+++

I thought I would end it here. But It turns out that You''ll Never Walk Alone originates in the 1949 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, "Carousel." (I did not know that!) Here it is sung in the film adaptation by Claramae Turner (herself a fine contraalto), who presents it as the operatic hommage that it is:

It is one of the stranger facts about our culture that a Broadway tearjerker ended up  being a fan song for the ages. But it is no stranger than Barcelona's Champion's League collapse, a second year in a row. 

 

*I was pleased to see no less an authority than Matthias Kartner, who introduced the song to Borussia, claim: "It's hard to sing because at first you go very deep and then you go high."

+The Busby Babes crashed in 1958.

++Of course, the horses were part of police crowd control measures. 

+++See also the footage here.

Comments

[Margaret Atherton]

On the contrary, that “when you walk through a storm is a great football song is one of the strangest facts imaginable. Are we clear what’s happening here? The heroine has just discovered the murdered body of her beloved (and father of her unborn child) and is being consoled by her Aunt Effie with uplifting song. Fun fact: Renee Fleming sang it at Obama’s Inauguration Concert. I do t think they were thinking of Liverpool.

[Eric Schliesser]

I had completely missed Fleming's performance. (She reprised it for a PBS special a few years later.) Thank you for calling my attention to it, Margaret!

[Alistair Isaac]

I live next to the Hibs stadium — I was totally going to comment re: "Sunshine on Leith" if you hadn't mentioned it!

(and, apparently, even if you had . . . . )