Get the latest gossip

From Queen to Lil Jon, How Sports Anthems Are Born

Sports anthems by Queen, Lil Jon, The White Stripes and more have been ubiquitous at sports games for years. Here's how a stadium anthem gets born.

It was May 1977, and Queen had just finished its encore at Bingley Hall in the English town of Stafford when the crowd, rather than dispersing and heading home, began to sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Originally featured in the 1945 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Carousel, Gerry & The Pacemakers had popularized the tune with their 1963 version, and shortly after, it became an anthem of the British soccer club Liverpool FC. In the decades since, an elite set of songs like these has become a genre unto itself, so known as sports anthems that they’re almost divorced from the original context in which they were released — call it “the Jock Jams effect,” after the compilation albums from the mid-’90s that featured hype-up tracks like House of Pain’s “Jump Around” and Tag Team’s “Whoomp! Take “Swag Surfin’ ” by Fast Life Yungstaz, for one 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 stop or the crowd needs an energy boost.

Get the Android app