Rap to clap to crap

By: Martyn | July 16th, 2009

Football clubs dabbling in the world of pop music always equals notoriously miss or miss results. Perhaps not primarily, but one major problem is that they tend to date awfully easily. Let’s begin with the Anfield Rap.

If you saw this after viewing one of Goldie Lookin’ Chain’s – how to put it – culturally richening efforts, you’d question my immediate assertion that footy toons date easily. Nevertheless, the postmodern pastiche that is Goldie Lookin’ Chain doesn’t necessarily represent twenty-first century music accurately, so yes, the Anfield Rap does now look like the product of an era further back than just 2 decades. Grob’s dancing, Barnes’s rapping, Aldridge’s Scouser send-up, this video and song has it all. Can you imagine the current Liverpool line-up attempting anything as outlandish as this?! Granted, Dossena did his best on the pitch to emulate Grob’s embarrassing movement, but I’m informed that his intentions were not to make us laugh.

The closest we now get to footballers sending themselves up comes via charities begging the FA or the clubs for thirty seconds of players *valuable* time. The results then are either Rio Ferdinand looking serious as a television commercial promotes its message (the silence is necessary because it’s hard to take him seriously when he talks – his top lip turns into the square piece hit from wall-to-wall in the game Pong), or James Corden doing the piss-take for them as they sit there lethargically, presumably with their agents and minders looking on anxiously in between exaggerated glances at the hands on their Auric Goldfinger-esque Omega watches. Such clips are a bit bland and fail to register even one decibel on the insult and/or interest scale.

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Next in the time-line of players embarrassing themselves via the medium of admittedly rather catchy ditties were Manchester United in their collaboration with Status Quo, as one can (and should) view below.

Poor old Mike Phelan. Despite being given a prominent role in the video alongside current Manchester City manager Mark Hughes (who no doubt erased this particular entry from his Curriculum Vitae when applying for the job at Eastlands), Phelan is not actually mentioned in the lyrics! He looks exactly the same 15 years ago as he does today in his MOTD interviews. Meanwhile, Lee Sharpe approaches the project with an almost unnerving gusto. Maybe the same singing skills that scare were actually enough to woo Abi Titmuss? Incredibly, one man featuring in both the video and lyrics still plays for the club. No prizes for guessing the name of the hairy Welshman in question.

Although this is the kind of audience clap-along song Status Quo still produce, it is very much of its time. This isn’t just in a fashion sense and musically, or because it represents a bygone age of when footballers were more connected to reality and the working-class roots the game initially boom-sprouted on; but also due to the fact that football has moved on a great deal. Although I mention the fact that club stalwart Phelan is omitted, one must take into account the minimal role he played for the side in the 1993/1994 campaign. This was in spite of the Manchester United squad of that day being a fraction of the size its 2009 equivalent is. Imagine such a song trying to incorporate the Manchester United squad and protagonists today: it’d make Meat Loaf look succinct!

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Fast-forward several prime-ministers and years and you reach spring 2008: notable in the world of football-pop for the release of James Fox’s Bluebirds Flying High. 2007/08 was a vintage year for the FA Challenge Cup with Chelsea and Liverpool being humbled by Barnsley and the mighty Caerdydd reaching the final itself! Cue presumably broke Fame Academy reject James Fox’s decision to bless the City faithful with an annoying song to supplement our incredible journey to the show-piece event.

Whereas the aforementioned songs were harmless fun, Fox’s worryingly serious effort is already terribly dated in more ways than one. Amidst lots of awkward feet-shuffling from whomever received his presence in an interview, Fox stated that the offering was a relationship between musical taste and football fanhood: “For me, this is the perfect marriage between my team and my passion for music”. If this ditty is supposed to epitomize his passion for music, it’s little wonder that his career in the industry has never taken off.

To cruelly stereotype, the paucity of any semblance of complexity and taste in terms of its composition can be forgiven due to the fact that its for fans of a sport not noted for a love of all things highbrow. However, the lyrics trouble me due to their general falsity. At least when Quo and the Red Devils boasted, “We’re on the road to glory now/Winning at home and away”, the fine array of talent in their squad added vast quantities of veracity to such a proudly bold statement. Fox’s tribute to the journeymen, has-beens, and overrated mercenaries in our squad – not to mention the staff – is unbelievably cringeworthy. More than anything however, any song that lists the protagonists of a playing squad and staff at the lower league level of the game is susceptible to the lyrics being rendered void just mere months later due to the fairground ride nature of transfers and short-term contracts so rife and beloved (and necessary) of managers and clubs in the old Division Two.

But we’re ready for a new tale [Yes, very new]
At the helm is Peter Ridsdale [Hmmm...]
Though the other teams are wishing [For an easy game?]
David Jones is on a mission [?]

[...]

With Parry, Rae and Ledley
The outcome seems so likely [:-I], [Goal machine]
Little Rambo’s like a tank
Scoring goals there’s Hasselbaink [Encapsulation of his City career]

Glenn & Roger guard the back door [gone, gone]
And Capaldi’s throw is top drawer [what a compliment to the ability of his toes and feet!]
Whitts and Thommo dynamite [This rhymed prose lark, piece of piss - Thommo's up at Turf Moor, while Whitts is a half-arsed Sky TV whore]
Kev and Trev are full of fight [the latter was full of body fat, not fight...]

[...]

If it hinges on the spot kick
I know Enkelman will save it [oh the irony!]
And I`m sure we will prevail
Give the Cup to Steve McPhail [does he deserve it?]

We are Cardiff City [Celts wouldn't have gone so well in the chorus...]
And we’re going to Wembley
Watch the Bluebirds Flying High [Weeeeeell...]
Paint the Cup in blue and white

We are Cardiff City
And we’re going to Wembley
We’ve been knocking on the door
For 80 years or more [Have we!?]

Dodgy lyrics? Check. Potential to date far too easily? Check. Hyperbole that fails to reflect the players true abilities? Check. Yup, this is a football song alright!

Its one redeeming feature is that the video does make me giggle – from Ridsdale’s goldfish-meets-Gordon-Brown-facial-tic vocal delivery style to the sheer disinterest expressed by Paul Parry, via the money-shot that is the pearly white teeth of one fat useless Dutch forward. But really, that’s all it’s got going for it.

There may well be better things to moan about, you’re right. But at the same time, anybody who fails to take this post without multiple pinches of jest is an idiot. Yet alas, I feel I am justified in consigning the inaccurate cheese-fest that is Bluebirds Flying High to the never-to-be-reopened- lest this ever attempts an escape – Cardiff City Room 101 (Kevin Campbell and Andy Campbell can keep it company).