UGGGGHHH! Top 5 Worst Rugby World Cup Songs
As you might be able to judge from the photo above, it’s officially World Cup Fever. Flags fly from almost every car that drives by, a certain second-five eighth made the front page of the paper for ripping his shirt, and it feels a lot more acceptable to start drinking at lunchtime. Things are actually pretty good right now and the RWC is already producing some great games, but let’s just get this out of the way – the World Cup shouldn’t be an excuse to make terrible music, even if it’s for the purpose of rousing up a little patriotic sentiment (there’s a pretty good argument that it’s impossible to make a good RWC song). So after listening to every World Cup-themed song we could find, here’s five of the worst for you to hear. You might agree, you might disagree, but that’s exactly what the comments section is for.
You forgot this one!
Yeah, writing a sports-related song isn’t that easy. Neil Finn had a go at a song to support the All Blacks and it didn’t quite hit the spot either…
I think his one sounds a bit too mournful – as if it’s saying “we’ll support you, even though you always lose.”
Out of these five, you’d have to go for the Scribe track. Just a pity he probably hasn’t cleared the rights to the Jay-Z sample so it’s doubtful whether it will get played on television, though I’d much rather hear it than the feelers covering an old song from overseas. Frankly, the “Men In Black” one above is preferably to hearing that one again – it’s just a pity that the Johnny Cash vibe of the track doesn’t quite come off (and the vid and band name are unfortunate).
I think the only successful sports pop song I can think of is the New Order one (though it has the same clunky rhymes as some of your examples above):
Anyone think of any others? There’s always Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ one I suppose…
I think you need to judge all these songs in comparison to the feelers’ song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrnTffDEn1A
It’s pretty faithful to the original, but does seem a bit irrelevant to the current situation. At least, if they’d used one of the songs above then a local musician would’ve made some money on the songwriting credits. Instead, a little more local money drifts overseas…
What about this one? : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j50HDbZ2NY
That’s awesome. I’ve never seen pics of Chris Knox’s hair that long! I wonder why they didn’t get Herbs on board? It seems like white liberal guilt just having three pakeha guys (not counting the chap on bongos) …
And this isn’t really going to be the song to inspire the team this time around…
I like “Men in Black”. Has an awesome thread running through it which would sound good played loud in a large stadium. The vid was only a working model, in case someone wanted to pick it up and overlay the song with sponsorship video.