The official European anthems and that taste for ultratrash

The official European anthems and that taste for ultratrash

This year's one is titled “Fire” and it belongs to “ours” Meduza with OneRepublic and the German singer Leonya sort of Bavarian version of Annalisa (in 2014 she won “Rising star”, or “Friends” in German style, then with her hits she won gold records), the latter representing the country hosting the tournament , Germany.

The video is full of product placement: all the sponsors of the tournament are there, cleverly inserted among the clichés of the genre. Children playing football in the street using Lidl bags as goalposts, friends going to the stadium sipping bottles of Coca-Cola, kids preparing for evenings with friends in front of the TV spraying themselves with Ax deodorant. And then the goals of Cristiano Ronaldo, Kevin De Bruyne, Federico Chiesa, in addition to the classic parade of the official shirts of the teams that will compete for Euro 2024 between now and 14 July.We're on fire tonight / like a million diamonds in the sky”, sing OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder and Leony in the song's chorus, which seems to be written following the manual of the perfect European football anthem. There is everything there needs to be: a sing-along melody, EDM sounds, a text that is a celebration of the desire to be together and party, because – says Ryan Teder – “the energy that comes from this sport has no equal in the world”. And also that right amount of trash: the chorus seems to come from a reel of an eighteen year old who has just returned from a month's study holiday in London.

After all, it is in this direction that the tradition of the official anthems of the European Championships moves. If we exclude the case of “GOAL” by Eurokids, played in the stadiums by the Guardia di Finanza Band before the start of the Italia 1980 matches (the song bore the signature of – among others – Luigi Lopez, known to most for having played the theme song of the Japanese animated TV series “The New Adventures of Pinocchio”), it was on the eve of the European Championships of 1992 that the practice of the official anthem of the tournament was officially inaugurated. The competition that year took place in Sweden and UEFA entrusted the task of singing the official anthem to the couple composed of

Towe Jaarnek and Peter Jöback, two local pop stars. Instead he was called to compose the song Lasse Holm, a true legend of Swedish pop music, author of practically all the greatest hits released in Sweden between the 80s and 90s, five times winner of the Melodifestivalen, the Sanremo Festival in Stockholm. “More than a game”, this is the title of the song, which was the soundtrack to the surprising triumph of Denmark (a team rescued ten days before the start of the tournament, after second place in the qualifiers), was exactly what was expected from a Swedish pop song of the early 90s, complete with chorus that “quoted” – that's a euphemism – that of ABBA's “The winner takes it all”.. It wasn't exactly a hit: in Sweden it didn't go beyond thirtieth place in the weekly chart of best-selling singles: Peter Jöback would continue to have a fairly successful career, while his partner Towe Jaarnek would soon be lost.

“But are we going to the stadium or to church?”, fans from all over Europe must have asked themselves when in the summer of 1996We're in this together” of the Simply Red it was chosen as the official anthem of the European Championships, hosted by England that year. Mick Hucknall and his companions were at the peak of success after hits such as the cover of “If you don't know me by now”, “Something got me started”, “Stars” and “Fairground” and when they received the proposal from UEFA to sing the official European anthem they accepted. But in their own way. “We're in this together” it was exactly the anthem you didn't expect from a mid-90s British band, full of Britpop: Blur had sent “The Great Escape” to the shops a few months before the start of the tournament, Oasis had responded with “(What's the story) Morning glory?”.

Simply Red instead came out with a gospel-style piece that the Irish Times called “.a hymn to the Lord, a prayer for peace and love”. In any case, “We're in this together” did not go unnoticed (the Melody Maker in the summer of '96 underlined how it was “played nine times a day by the BBC”), but almost thirty years later the song seems being removed from Simply Red's history. From the sacred to the profane, one might say: in 2000 it was the Swedes E-Type to create the anthem of the European Championships, hosted that year by the Netherlands and Belgium. “Champion 2000” resumed in the chorus the tune of a traditional Dutch song, “Oranje Boven”, sung by a choir of fans on a Europop basis.

Steps “Force” Of Nelly Furtado (Portugal 2004 soundtrack). Go ahead”Can you hear me” Of Enrique Iglesias (hymn of the 2008 European Championships in Austria and Switzerland). But Woe betide anyone who turns a blind eye to Oceana's trashy “Endless summer”.. It was the 2012: that year the European Championships took place in Poland and Ukraine and UEFA thought it best to entrust the anthem to one German singer, but of Martinique origins, specialized in reggae and funk musicwho had participated in the local edition of “Dancing with the Stars” in Poland.

The lyrics of “Endless summer” simply repeated, like a mantra: “Uoho-oh-oh / yeh-eh-eh-eh / endless summer”. All on one.pseudo-Caribbean dance base, not exactly typical sounds of Polish and Ukrainian music. After the hallucination of “Endless summer”, Oceana soon disappeared from the radar. Not just complete strangers, however: highly acclaimed artists have also lent themselves to such operations. As David Guettawhich in 2016 he created together with Zara Larsson “This one's for you”, or EDM that meets a martial rhythm, the official anthem of France 2016. And how U2.

The story of “We are the people”, the song that Bono and The Edge made in 2020 together with Martin Garrix for the European Championships, then postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic, it is delicious. The Dutch DJ began working on the song as early as 2018, then recorded it in 2019 in Munich together with Bono and The Edge, who had surprisingly decided to come on board. Initially scheduled for the end of April 2020, the release of the single was postponed to the following year due to the postponement of the tournament. In conjunction with the departure of the 2021 traveling European Championships, therefore, the song is released: it starts as a song by the Irish band, before becoming the classic stadium anthem full of all the clichés of the case, from the desire to be together to hope, through peace and serenity Yet in Italy that tune in the chorus has already been heard.

One wonders: won't it be too similar to that of “Ringo Starr” by .Nuclear Tactical Penguins? He also intervenes in the case Riccardo Zanotti, the frontman of the Bergamo band. Who, referring to the (cult) story of the plagiarism accusation made by Al Bano against Michael Jackson at the beginning of the 90s, ironically says: “Call me Albino's Al Bano”.