Showing posts with label World Cup 2014. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World Cup 2014. Show all posts

Friday, 9 May 2014

From Bobby Charlton's Comb-Over To Corden And Barlow - A Cultural History Of The England World Cup Song





 Gary got on with Michael like a house with rising damp
 
With the Premier League winding up this weekend, attention will soon shift to The World Cup and everything that goes with it. Of course it’s the football that matters, but it’s impossible to ignore the media paraphernalia that goes with it, of which the primary example is of course the World Cup song.


For this year’s effort the FA have shown their usual imagination by roping in the one man ‘Can I have a Knighthood?’ campaign that is Gary Barlow, and the result is like every electron in the former Take That man’s body – bland.

Despite the fact that it’s not even a new song or a substantial reworking of an old one, ‘Greatest Day’ seems to perfectly fit our footballing era. Like most things involving Barlow it’s ever so slightly insipid – Our Gary’s default expression being that of a man who’s mildly narked that you haven’t used his favourite brand of tea bag. Like most X-Factor montage songs, any inspirational qualities it may have once had have been destroyed by a thousand saccharine shots of teary meetings with elderly relatives. Rather than a battle cry to go into battle for Harry and St George, it’s the sort of song that might inspire you to do your tax returns early (or possibly not in Gary’s case).

Friday, 15 November 2013

Tonight It's Not Just Cristiano v Zlatan But Pop Versus Rock and Roll





The egos have landed, the hair gel and hair ties have been meticulously put into place and tonight two of the world’s greatest players go up against each other to decide who’ll be taking centre stage in next year’s Nike ambush marketing campaign, and who’ll be ITV’s number one target for the job of pretending Adrian Chiles isn’t a total moron at the World Cup next summer. 

Yes it’s Zlatan versus  Cristiano, Ibrahimovic against Ronaldo, or to give the match its proper title Portugal v Sweden. This match represents more though than two men and their mediocre teams’ Freudian journey from Lisbon to the Copacabana. 

It represents the divide in our culture between rock and pop, between the desire to see the talents of the wanton libertine and the pretty boy superstar, between the difficult unpredictable artist and the ultimate artisan.