Do you ever listen to the Match of the Daytheme song and think "this rousing anthem is an example of classic BBC post-war consensus building. Shorn of military overtures so familiar with older sports themes, the Match of the Daytheme is a celebration of peace and civilisation through the medium of blaring horns. It's happy; it's rousing and endures to this day."
Thought not. But somebody out there does. And if it’s one thing that gets people hyperventilating and pounding out expletive-ridden missives with their fists on interweb forums, it’s the use of music in football coverage.
That awful, and too, too brassy, Match of the Daymusic is in the news this week for being voted "the most recognised theme tune on British TV". It held off stiff competition from the EastEnders, Dr Whoand Countdownthemes in some utterly pointless but curiously fascinating poll.
Offering up his usual penetrative analysis, Gary Lineker said of the poll that "the MOTDtheme never fails to excite me. You just know what's coming next, lots of football action and goals – and everyone can hum it!" Indeed.
The theme was written to order for the programme by Barry Stoller in 1970. Oddly, it isn’t available to download on the BBC sports site because the corporation never got around to owning the copyright to the track.
The use of Stoller's antiquated theme song (although it has been "remixed" over the years to take the fusty edge off it) is at some remove from how Match of the Dayusually showcases music in its coverage. There's usually a queue of indie bands throwing their MP3 files at the programme's production team in hopes of getting their miserable tracks used during the much-coveted Goal of the Month segment.
Such is the interest in the music used in the programme that the BBC set up a special weblink where viewers could write in with band and song title queries.
Watch the show and you realise that the producers do put it a lot of time and effort into what is used. The Fall, The Verve, Lily Allen, Iglu and Hartly, The Envy Core and Placebo (the latter apparently suggested by their biggest fan, Adrian Chiles) have all had their music judiciously used.
As far as I know, they haven't yet played the best-titled football song ever: And David Seaman Won't Be Very Happy About Thatby members of the Cocteau Twins and Lush, which was written to "commemorate" Spurs beating Arsenal 3-1 in the 1991 FA Cup semi-final. However, it's a song that makes Nice One, Cyrilsound like Radiohead and gives the shoegazing scene such a bad name.
There's a second big Music in Football story this week. The BBC has just unveiled a preview of the music it will use during coverage of the World Cup in South Africa. To a post- Nessun Dormageneration, this will be a major talking point in polite pub society for some time before, during and after the main event.
A previously unheard-of London band called The Dallas Guild will be the main benefactors, as their still untitled song will feature as the “official” BBC World Cup anthem. All things considered, they’ve made quite a good fist of it, even if it does sound like a Prodigy B-side with The Soweto Gospel Choir added for some “ethnic” validity.
Elsewhere, it's going to be a bit of a musical nightmare. South Africa was, of course, too busy oppressing the majority of its citizens over the years to bother with building up a native music industry. Instead, expect plenty of repeat plays of Toto's godawful Africa, leavened with a surfeit of Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
That sound in the background of hands being rubbed together gleefully comes courtesy of Paul Simon, whose 1986 Gracelandalbum will be used extensively by every TV broadcaster covering the event. Here's a mad prediction: expect Gracelandto go Top 10 again in the album charts in the first week of July.
This wouldn’t really be the place to mention that, back at the time, Simon controversially, and rather haughtily, defied a long-standing United Nations cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa (and also incurred the wrath of the ANC) to visit and record in the country.
