Truly, we are, living in strange times.
Strange days indeed - most peculiar, mama
(kudos to any reader who can identify that song lyric without googling it)
With numbers testing positive for
Covid-19 here in the UK surging, the government is nevertheless relaxing the
restrictions with which we have been living for fifteen months. Cue joy and relief, but also much social
media driven anger and condemnation, barrack-room expertise and prophecies of
doom and gloom....Let’s wait and see.
Yet as the UK and its government once
again risks being cast in the role of international pariah, the country is at
the same time riding a wave of excitement and national pride whipped up by the
performance of England's football team, guided and led by the admirably
restrained, palpably decent, thoughtful and eloquent Gareth Southgate.
In 2018, the unexpected success of
his young squad in reaching the Semi-Finals of the World Cup in Russia briefly
diverted attention, lifted the mood and unified the nation at the height of the
agonisingly long process of leaving the EU. Oh to be back in such simple,
carefree days….
Three years later, an even younger
squad has gone one step further in the delayed Euro 2020 Tournament and at the
time of writing, the nation (well certainly its media) is in a state of heady
excitement and euphoria at the tantalising prospect of the squad bringing to an
end to the fifty-five year wait for a major tournament win in our national sport.
Southgate's squad are more than just
a group of footballers more gifted than their predecessors of several
generations past. They are a thoroughly admirable group of young men, schooled by
their clubs and in no small part by their national coach in the appropriate
behaviours, attitudes and responsibilities that come with their status as
richly-remunerated national heroes. Gone, it seems, are the days of laddish
“boys will be boys” behaviour, of responding to media questions with
contemptuous clichés or even open hostility, and of hiding from the bigger
issues in society.
The 2021 squad is a rainbow coalition
in some ways reminiscent of France's golden generation which won the World Cup
in 1998 and the Euros in 2000. It is a team of thoroughly modern English footballers,
many with recent family origins from outside the country, yet every one of them
proudly flaunts their patriotism and pride in wearing that shirt with its iconic
three lions. The likes of Marcus Rashford, Tyrone Mings and Raheem Sterling
have been unafraid to speak out against racial and social injustice, whilst
Harry Kane, in some ways every inch the cockney diamond geezer of yesteryear,
wears his LGBT+ armband with manifest comfort; men like him in the
not-too-distant past would probably have exhibited the tribal homophobia and intolerance
which was once endemic among the white working classes.
Rashford in particular has become a
national treasure thanks to his off-the-field advocacy for children like he
once was, and that he did so last year with steadfast politeness and respect
for those in power was a remarkable achievement. He may be an angry young man
from the wrong side of the tracks in Wythenshawe, but his anger at social
injustice is nuanced and constructively channelled.
Other players, like Mason Mount,
Declan Rice and Calvin Philips not only look like schoolboys living out their
dream, but behave with the gratitude and humility that in the past was often
lacking in those paid a fortune to do what most of us just have to do for fun. Win
or lose against those stylish and talented Italians on Sunday night, these
young men have done themselves and their manager proud, and I for one will be
eternally grateful for the joy that they have brought us in this toughest of
years.
And then there's the music...
Heady days need a soundtrack, as we
have been so effectively reminded by all the nostalgia for the summer of ’96,
but unlike in 1996, the 2021 soundtrack is strangely retrospective. In 1996, Britpop
was at its height, producing some of the best new material that had been written
in a generation, launching stellar careers for the likes of the Spice Girls and
solo Robbie Williams, whilst David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and the under-rated
Lightning Seeds created their singalong masterpiece, Three Lions. That song is everywhere right now, almost always
murdered by a tuneless drunken chorus, but it is in my view truly a work of
genius. It's wonderfully English, not triumphalist as many think, but rather a
self-deprecating tale of repeated failures and near-misses, laced with the pride
which we as a nation seem to take in plucky losers and the timid but very real
longing for redemption.
Of course, Three Lions has been at the forefront of our giddy ride to the
Final of Euro 2020, but it is being run close by Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline, which we have heard
belted out by players and fans after every win, gleefully joining in with the “dah-dah-dah”.
This has set me thinking, as often
happens with my musically addled brain: how is it that certain songs achieve
iconic ubiquity years after what was initially a thoroughly underwhelming chart
performance?
Sweet Caroline
is a perfect example.
Neil Diamond was for some years a respected but unheralded
songwriter, until he broke through in the UK with Cracklin’ Rosie in late 1970. He had written I'm a Believer for the Monkees and other successful songs, but his
name was little known on this side of the Atlantic, and when he finally
achieved modest success as a singer, he was to me and my teenage contemporaries
the sort of singer that your granny liked, a crooner no less. Sweet Caroline had been written and
released in 1969 in tribute to JFK's daughter Caroline Kennedy, and made no
mark whatsoever on the UK charts. Two years later, it was released as a
follow-up to Cracklin’ Rosie, and
reached No 8 in our charts. For the next thirty years or so, it was largely
forgotten, but then early in the 2000s it started popping up at the sort of
disco that goes with every modern wedding reception - the sort where dad dances,
granny kicks off her heels to reveal her true undignified self and ten-year-old
boys do a knee slide across the floor. A similar thing happened to Can’t Take my Eyes Off You, another
minor hit from the late 60s by an American crooner dressed in a pullover - Andy
Williams.
Next, DJs responsible for after-match
playlists caught on to it, and in no time everyone knew it, such that when your
team pulled off an unlikely escape from relegation and the fans partied like
they had won the League, Sweet Caroline, dah-dah-dah
became a song of triumph and joy. Then as Wembley filled up this summer with
fans for the first time in over a year, England started winning, and the rest
is history. Neil Diamond’s accountants must be laughing all the way to the
bank.
Many songs have had a similar
trajectory; here’s a few more that were either unnoticed at the time of
release, or in some cases derided:
Tony Christie’s Is this the Way to Amarillo, written by the wonderful Neil Sedaka
and containing some of the cheesiest rhymes ever attempted (Dawning-Morning, Amarillo-Willow-Pillow,
Marie-Me, Ringing-Singing, Maria-See her etc ) made it all the way to No 18
in 1971 (there’s something about that year!), then remained forgotten until Bolton’s comic genius Peter
Kay imbued it with post-modern irony for 2005’s Comic Relief, such that it
became a mass singalong song. I maintain that one of the happiest moments of my
entire life was when I was one of 27 000 fans at the Reebok Stadium in May 2005, celebrating as Sam Allardyce’s Bolton
Wanderers team of misfits and has-beens secured European football to the tune
of Christie’s Shala-la-la-la-la-la-la-la –
Diouf-Diouf.
The Proclaimers’ 500 Miles made it to No 11 in 1988, then remained forgotten until
revived years later, again by a combination of mobile DJs and football fans; likewise, Jeff
Beck’s Hi Ho Silver Lining (No 14 in
1967, No17 in 1972) and even Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire, which has never even made the charts, yet achieved anthemic status
after Liverpool’s 2005 Champions’ League win and the England Cricket Team’s
Ashes win the same year.
Even Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now was a relatively modest UK No 9 on its first
release in 1979 at a time when the now legendary band had passed their first
wave of success and were seen by many music fans to be an example of outmoded,
overblown and over-produced pomp-rock. Forty years on, it is everyone’s
favourite singalong song.
The list could go on, and many will
have their own favourites to add to this list. They all date from the days when singles chart position and longevity was very much the test of a song's success; since around the turn of the millennium, chart success has mattered little, indeed few of any age could name the current Number One at any given time. Yet despite failing that test at the time of their release, these songs have become enduring and ubiquitous. What do they have in common?
Well not a lot really, other than that intangible thing called a damn good
tune, often a brilliant hook and above all something we should just call singability.
Let’s just hope we’re still singing Sweet Caroline at 10pm on Sunday night,
and that “good time never seemed so good” proves to be true. I think we all
deserve that pleasure.
#ItsComingHome
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