Jonathan Geffen once wrote that when a song is born, it goes alone. Indeed, songs often find themselves floating in the open air, looking for an audience to give them a new interpretation – and sometimes, even literally getting lost. Even those who believe that songs are wild creatures, sometimes won’t believe the places they go. Take the stands songs for example. Songs that are sung by fans of football teams who are looking for catchy tunes to encourage their team. History shows that more than once their choices – which usually amount to tunes from the Mediterranean singer’s style, a tune by some group from Argentina – can come from even greater distances than Argentina, and from unexpected places. Here are five stories about songs that have come a very long way from the original recording to the moment when an entire crowd sings it in a hoarse throat.
Maccabi Haifa fans in the Latin pop segment
The fans of Maccabi Haifa, until the last few years, already forgot about championship songs. The club that was used to conquering every possible summit in the 80s, 90s and certainly in the 2000s, spent the last decade in a lower place in the table. But when the golden age returned, with the arrival of coach Barak Becher, there is one song that was pulled from the Boydam. And of all the songs it could have been, it was actually a song by a Spanish teen-pop singer.
Enrique Iglesias is not remembered as the brilliance of the music world. Unlike his father Julio – one of the greatest singers of music in Spain – Enrique bet on an international pop career, and it can be safely said that, at least in relation to his father, he was less successful. One song that did have success was “I’m Not In Love”, along with singer Kelis. It was quite a hit, also in Israel, which paved its way to the stands of Maccabi Haifa.
“The championship/ Back home to Carmel/ So let’s say thank you to God/ The championship is green”, they sang once in 2009, then again in 2011, and only in the last two years it happened again. Do any of them know that their celebratory song started as a ticking pop hit in the middle of the first decade of the millennium? I’m in Doubt.
Hapoel Tel Aviv fans do not leave Michael Jackson alone
Yes, today Michael Jackson is mostly considered something to be ashamed of. One whose songs are not played, one whose associations are less shows full of people and more… well, you already know. But there is one place where Michael Jackson’s songs can really work surprisingly well – the stands of a sports team.
Hapoel Tel Aviv fans are known for their ability to take complex tunes, and sometimes provide cool exits in the field of music. In this case, they went for a rather strange choice – the song “You Are Not Alone” by the former king of pop, a very melancholic and sad song, became a game-opening song for them. “All over the world, everyone asks / how is it possible / to love you so much”, sings the chorus from stands 4 and 5, with a rhythmic melody of drums.
Beitar Jerusalem fans support the community
Probably the song with the biggest dissonance, considering the meaning of the text of course. “Go West”, released in 1993 by the London synth-pop band, was a song released at a not coincidental time – two years after the dissolution of the Soviet bloc and the fall of the Berlin Wall. And his words – the real ones – were all a true call to freedom, to a place where the hero of the song and his partner could live as they wished.
Now take this song and put it in the stands of Beitar Jerusalem fans – who turned it into a song that primarily symbolizes less of those who love, and more of those who hate. I will not list the full lyrics of the song here, for obvious reasons. I will only note that its opening words are “love Only Beitar” and “hates everything else”. Now one can only imagine who they hate and how. As mentioned, a very long way.
Maccabi Tel Aviv fans choose love over work
There is probably no child of the right age who does not remember this band – the late nineties, days when putting piles of jojoba gel on you was considered a fashionable act and MTV Europe music videos played on the screen. One of the bands that starred there is Upspring, a punk-pop band responsible for the big hit “Pretty Fly For A White Guy”.
Some may remember the song that came after, and tried to continue that success – “Why Don’t You Get A Job”, a song in which the singer implores different people to gather themselves and find a real job. With or without connection, Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer fans adopted it as a new song full of burning love for their team.
“There is nothing I love more/ Just coming to see you/ Even when I leave I always come back/ My life is yours”. Or in other words, work is nice, but love is more.
Fans of all teams hate hats, it turns out
And this is probably the strangest choice of all. Men Without Hats is a Canadian synth-pop group that was active mainly between 1977 and 1993, but runs in various lineups to this day. They also had one particularly successful hit, the infectious “The Safety Dance” from the early eighties, which was also amusingly parodied by Conan O’Brien.
But, as mentioned, football fans are people who like to dig – and at some point, they found a lesser-known song by the band called “Pop Goes The World”. It probably started with the fans of South American teams, who embraced the melody, and it spread all the way to Israel to sing “Hapoel/Hatchoub/Orange/Hakaluh Oleh”, and sometimes they actually played with the melody. It turns out, it even reached Bnei Yehuda fans in an away game in the Netherlands. How strange, how fun.