It was May 1977 and Queen had just finished their encore at Bingley Hall in the English town of Stafford when the crowd, instead of disbanding and heading home, started singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone'. Originally appeared in the 1945 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Carousel, Gerry & The Pacemakers had popularized the tune with their 1963 release and shortly afterwards it became the anthem of British football team Liverpool FC. The spontaneous incident at Bingley Hall would change the cultural landscape forever: it inspired singer Freddie Mercury and guitarist Brian May to write two of Queen's most iconic songs.
“The story we've been told is that Brian and Freddie said, 'Why don't we write our own anthems?' says Dominic Griffin, vice president of licensing at Disney Music Group, which owns the North American rights to Queen's music. “So Brian wrote 'We Will Rock You', Freddie wrote 'We Are the Champions' and they started ending their shows with those. I'm not sure if there was a specific moment, but the band started to realize that there wasn't much difference between the crowd at a rock show and the crowd at a football game. He had the same reaction.”
Whether because of the stomp-clap beat, the call-to-action lyrics, or the simple melody — or more likely a combination of all three — “We Will Rock You” became one of the most widely recognized songs in history, especially at sporting events. , where he rocks every night in arenas and stadiums around the world. According to BMI, “We Will Rock You” is the song in the performing rights organization's 22 million-song repertoire most played at NHL, NFL and MLB games. It has amassed over 9.5 million feature-length radio and television performances in the US from its release in 1977 through the third quarter of 2023.
It's no accident. Since acquiring Queen's catalog in 1990, both Disney and the band have encouraged radio stations to use “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” in promotions, allowed sports stadiums and teams to play them. use to soundtrack highlights and promotional videos (which require additional approval, separate from the general public performance license that all venues need to simply play a song in a public place) and licensed them for now-classic sports movies like The mighty ducks, Any Sunday and The Substitutions. The company's research data, including data from Radio Disney, showed that all generations responded to the songs.
“I think it was a way for sports teams to play something that everyone in the venue likes,” Griffin says. “These Queen songs tick all the boxes because the lyrics are great for sporting events and they're just natural anthems, and the band went out to write an arena anthem that turned into a sports anthem.”
In the decades since, an elite set of songs like these have become a genre unto themselves, so well-known as sports anthems that they've become almost divorced from the original context in which they were released — call it “the Jock Jams effects', following the compilation's mid-'90s albums that included hype-up tracks like House of Pain's 'Jump Around' and 'Whoomp!' of Tag Team! (There it is).” But more modern songs have also joined the pantheon in recent years, such as the White Stripes' “Seven Nation Army” and the near-ubiquitous DJ Snake and Lil Jon's “Turn Down for What in current sporting events.
“It becomes folk music when things like that happen,” Jack White said of Seven Nation Army on Conan O'Brien needs a friend podcast in 2022. “It's just becoming ubiquitous. I'm sure a lot of people singing the tune have no idea what the song is or where it came from or why or whatever — it doesn't matter anymore, and that's just amazing.”
“We're fortunate that many of Lil Jon's songs have become incredible stadium anthems over the years,” says the artist's manager, Rob Mac. “With 'Turn Down for What,' we knew the record was huge, but the video really helped boost the song as well. His music has always fired up fans and crowds – his voice and energy [lend themselves] on it, and people really embrace it and connect with it. His music became part of the experience inside a stadium.”
However, many factors need to align – not just the fundamentals of what makes a song appeal to the masses, but also hard work behind the scenes and a bit of luck – for a song to take off in a sports setting. Labels are constantly pitching not only traditional artists, but new compositions and songs to local groups and TV networks hoping for placement. If a song makes the cut, it can be a huge boost for an artist.
“We spend a lot of time trying to get our new artists to play in sports arenas because you're reaching 20,000 to 100,000 people at a time and you have a captive audience that can't turn off the radio,” he says. Griffin, noting the success Disney has had with acts like Demi Lovato, Almost Monday and Grace Potter, whose “The Lion, the Beast, the Beat” released multiple promos for the Detroit Lions during this year's playoffs of the NFL. “Anytime you can get your music in front of so many thousands of people, it definitely helps with recognition.”
Take Fast Life Yungstaz's “Swag Surfin',” for an extreme example: The song has been a staple at the Kansas City Chiefs' Arrowhead Stadium for a few years now, played when the defense needs a big stand or the crowd needs an energy boost. In the weeks leading up to the NFL playoffs, the song averaged between 350,000 and 400,000 on-demand streams per week. that number jumped to over 1 million the week the Chiefs beat the Miami Dolphins in the playoffs, when Taylor Swift was seen dancing to the signature song along with Chiefs fans.
“In the arena business, when you've got 20,000 or 40,000 people and you're trying to get them to do something, sometimes it's the big, dumb gesture that really wins the day. Whether it's some silly guy dancing on the scoreboard or something that tells you to stand up and shout, or a song that has a simple melody where everyone can join in, that really seems to be the most effective,” says Ray Castoldi, who has been Music Director/Organist for Madison Square Garden since 1989. In his role, he also frequently selects the music for New York Knicks and New York Rangers games and occasionally plays the organ for the New York Mets at Citi Field.
Castoldi says he's constantly looking for new songs to add to his game playlist, and that he regularly tries out new material at the Garden — but that the rotation stays pretty steady, with about 300 songs for each game. “Arena standards are songs that appeal to such a broad base that you almost can't help yourself – it's something in human nature where it mobilizes a large group of people,” he says. “I always look at the equation like this: You're playing the music for this huge set of people and you want to get them all fired up and get their energy going, and then they give that energy to the players.”
And once a song reaches that threshold, it takes on a new, almost mythical status that can far surpass the rest of an artist's work. House of Pain garnered 87 million US on-demand streams in 2023, according to Luminate. 75 million of that was for “Jump Around.” Even for an act as beloved and popular as Queen, who garnered 1.3 billion streams in 2023, 8% of their streams were “We Will Rock You.” As Brian May said in 2017 — in an interview afterwards Advertising sign called this song the No. 1 jock jam of all time — “It's beyond hits. We don't need to sell them in any way.”
This story will appear in the February 10, 2024 issue Advertising sign.
