Football Chants - Works or Not Works? Folk Music or Something Else?

MusicBrainz
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OK I’ll clear the air first - I am not big on football, but I am big on folk music and music history and for all of the things I dislike about football the music and chants that are involved with the sport are interesting.

Maybe (unlikely) there are some football historians in our mix or maybe they’ll find this later and help this sportphobic music nerd on his quest.

After following a rabbit hole that lead to me to looking at some of these football songs in a bit more depth, one thing I have found is that some of them can end up using some common chants. These chants can differ slightly (like typical folk songs do) but often follow a set rhythm or lyric composition. Chants can differ between teams and countries, but there are some which are kind of obvious that don’t seem to have been picked up as “folk” songs, and yet there is no actual information about where these really originate from.

For example, the most common chant in English football (certainly used in international games) would be singing En-ger-land (in that split fashion) to a steady beat. One that nearly any casual sports fan could join in with.

An example of it would be here at the start of this Bad Manners song (which also includes identifiable interpolations to The Great Escape Main Title and Come on Eileen):

Sadly as search has been rendered utterly useless on YouTube finding other examples of these classic chants that aren’t in some compilation of the more distasteful chants that exist, I have only found this video which also includes some more common examples of football chants:

The first chant heard here (still yet unnamed, might be possibly forever unnamed) is another example of a popular chant that you often hear with eight rhyhtmic claps followed by shouting “England!” - but again it doesn’t seem to have an actual title or name.

As mentioned I find the world of folk music (in the traditional sense, music sung by everyday people for pleasure or for a specific event) really interesting and have checked a few resources online like the Vaughan Williams Roud Index and MainlyNorfolk but they seem to have no real results.

I’ve even pestered ChatGPT with my queries and it returns seemingly nothing.

So the questions really are:

  • Do we care to identify these chants as works (treating them in the same way we with other folk music such as Nursery Rhymes)
  • If we do want to, what do we call them if they have no name

This doesn’t have to be answered immediately, and as I’ve kind of explained this might end up amounting to not very much at all but I thought it could be an interesting topic.

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A quick reply… from a folk \ punk fan who also appreciates a good footie chant.

Very much a folk style. A terrace chant will take a popular tune, usually something from the charts, and then change the words over the top to say something new. Either to say how good their team is, or praise their favourite player. Or just as likely say something rude about the opposition.

Some chants will be made up the day before, some are totally spontaneous.

When it gets real clever is when two sides of the stadium knock back and forth with these songs trying to out challenge each other with the banter.

Of course we get the full on songs like Four Lions, Vindaloo that are written for the tournaments that then get a life of their own on the terraces.

I would say that some of the more famous chants are as strong as and as good as folk songs. Just shorter. They can also last for many years (or as many years as the player is with the club)

But they are not poetry. Or prose. This is a plain normal song. Lyrics to music. Just like a folk song. Especially as many folk songs will sing over a different older tune.

I’ll find you some decent examples tomorrow. There are also plenty of websites documenting some of the best examples. (But will be impossible to keep things without swear words… crowds can be BRUTAL :joy:)

Almost clean… but a little old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8D0aBTyXgA Note the famous tunes, but new lyrics. Had to put the scousers up as an example… because of 5:32 When a stadium really sings with passion

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(pardon my American self getting confused with y’all talking about socc- I mean, football) :soccer: :football:

just wanted to add my two cents that yes, I also think these could very well be added as works, especially in a folk music sense

also, I wanted to add that music is quite important in several American sports too, with many sports stadiums even having organs installed (especially Baseball and Hockey, but probably others too)

in theory, a sports organist can play most any song (and pop culture references are quite common), but there are many staples in the repertoire of a sports organist, most of them in the video above or the videos below

if y’all are interested, here’s a couple news pieces on the Washington Nationals, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Minnesota Twins organists

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Of course we do :wink:

  • If we do want to, what do we call them if they have no name

I would use the first line of the song as the title. That seems to be quite common with folk music or very old music that doesn’t have a title. Of course aliases can be used to good effect here.

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