Sports and Music: A Winning Combination
At first blush, many people do not realize the importance of music to sports. Music can help pump you up, it can be your theme song, and it can rally your fans. Indeed, if you think back to the most recent game you went to, surely there was plenty of music blasting over the arena's sound system, and with good reason! In honor of the incredible role that music plays and can play, here are just a few of the greatest sports songs of all time.
Probably the first song that everyone thinks of is Eye of the Tiger, made famous by the movie Rocky. The opening notes of the song are so catchy, and the associated imagine of Sylvester Stallone mounting the stairs triumphantly is so iconic, that this is truly the quintessential sports song. It is virtually impossible not to get pumped up upon hearing this song.
Another absolutely iconic, great song is We Are the Champions by Queen. Clearly the imagery of victors described by this song was made to go with sports teams. Nearly every home game where the home team wins closes with a rousing round of this song, with the crowd singing along heartily. Certainly no World Series, Superbowl or Stanley Cup is complete without We Are the Champions. Queen certainly knew how to write a song that would get played ad infinitum!
Yet another of the greatest songs of all time has to be Take Me Out to the Ballgame. This song has been around for so long that hardly anyone remembers a time when it did not exist. It is also wonderful in that it captures the historical role baseball has played in society and harkens back to a simpler time of peanuts and crackerjacks. It reminds everyone of the simple joy of going out with the family on a warm Saturday afternoon to watch the home team play, before steroids and astronomical salaries and ticket prices. A baseball game simply is not a baseball game without singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the seventh inning stretch!
Not all of these great songs deal directly with sports, though. Many of them are great because they are associated with a particular athlete or team. For example, the song Enter Sandman makes this list because of its association with Mariano Rivera, the great Yankees closer. Every time Mariano gets called into a game during a game played at home, this song blasts from the loudspeaker, suggesting that when he comes to pitch, it is lights out game over. Of course, Mariano has such an incredible record, one of the greatest in baseball history, that this is hardly an exaggeration!
More recently, Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind has come to the fore as the Yankees', and indeed all of New York's, theme song. Of course the fact that the team actually won that year, and that Jay-Z performed the song during both the World Series and the World Series victory celebration, helps to cement the song's position.
Probably the first song that everyone thinks of is Eye of the Tiger, made famous by the movie Rocky. The opening notes of the song are so catchy, and the associated imagine of Sylvester Stallone mounting the stairs triumphantly is so iconic, that this is truly the quintessential sports song. It is virtually impossible not to get pumped up upon hearing this song.
Another absolutely iconic, great song is We Are the Champions by Queen. Clearly the imagery of victors described by this song was made to go with sports teams. Nearly every home game where the home team wins closes with a rousing round of this song, with the crowd singing along heartily. Certainly no World Series, Superbowl or Stanley Cup is complete without We Are the Champions. Queen certainly knew how to write a song that would get played ad infinitum!
Yet another of the greatest songs of all time has to be Take Me Out to the Ballgame. This song has been around for so long that hardly anyone remembers a time when it did not exist. It is also wonderful in that it captures the historical role baseball has played in society and harkens back to a simpler time of peanuts and crackerjacks. It reminds everyone of the simple joy of going out with the family on a warm Saturday afternoon to watch the home team play, before steroids and astronomical salaries and ticket prices. A baseball game simply is not a baseball game without singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the seventh inning stretch!
Not all of these great songs deal directly with sports, though. Many of them are great because they are associated with a particular athlete or team. For example, the song Enter Sandman makes this list because of its association with Mariano Rivera, the great Yankees closer. Every time Mariano gets called into a game during a game played at home, this song blasts from the loudspeaker, suggesting that when he comes to pitch, it is lights out game over. Of course, Mariano has such an incredible record, one of the greatest in baseball history, that this is hardly an exaggeration!
More recently, Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind has come to the fore as the Yankees', and indeed all of New York's, theme song. Of course the fact that the team actually won that year, and that Jay-Z performed the song during both the World Series and the World Series victory celebration, helps to cement the song's position.