SoL in Guardian article

[Greenbeard]

To set you all off again.......

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jun/02/the-power-of-crowds?CMP=share_btn_tw

PS just the first three paras for SoL. It is a very looooooong article with no further references to the world's best football anthem.

[Ringothedog]

Enjoyable read 🇳🇬

[CyberSauzee]

Thanks for posting. A great 3 paragraphs worth reading.

[Bangkok Hibby]

Thanks for posting. A great 3 paragraphs worth reading.

Yep that 3 paragraphs alone had me grinning from ear to ear, and just a wee fleeting lump in the throat :agree:

[Viva_Palmeiras]

Yep that 3 paragraphs alone had me grinning from ear to ear, and just a wee fleeting lump in the throat :agree:

Wouldn’t be.a Gridian ;) article without three paragraphs turning into 25!

[SouthMoroccoStu]

The 3 paragraphs

As lockdown loomed in March, I became obsessed with a football anthem for a team 400 miles away. I had read a news story about Edinburgh residents singing a Proclaimers song called Sunshine on Leith from their balconies. I didn’t know the song, and when I looked it up, I found a glorious video of 26,000 Hibernian fans singing it in a sun-drenched Hampden Park, after a long-hoped-for Scottish Cup win in 2016. Both teams had left the pitch, and the Rangers’ half of the stadium was empty. It looked like a concert in which the fans were simultaneously the performer and the audience.

I was entranced. I watched it again, and again. The sight and sound of this collective joy was transcendent: tens of thousands of green-and-white scarves held aloft, everyone belting out the song at the tops of their lungs. When the crowd hits the chorus, the volume levels on the shaky smartphone video blow their limit, exploding into a delirious roar of noise. I thought of something that one of the leaders of the nationwide “Tuneless Choirs” – specifically for people who can’t sing – once said: “If you get enough people singing together, with enough volume, it always sounds good.” Our individual failings are submerged; we become greater than the sum of our meagre parts. Anthems sung alone sound thin and absurd – think of the spectacle of a pop star bellowing the Star-Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl. Anthems need the warmth of harmony, or even the chafing of dissonance. They need the full sound of bodies brushing up against each other in pride, joy or righteousness.

Sunshine on Leith is ostensibly a love song, but in this instance, it wasn’t being sung to a lover, or to the victorious Hibs players, or to the football club, or to Leith – the 26,000 singers seemed to be addressing each other. In their many and varied voices, they had transformed it into a love song to the crowd: “While I’m worth my room on this Earth, I will be with you / While the chief puts sunshine on Leith, I’ll thank him for his work, and your birth and my birth.” In the YouTube comments, fans of other clubs, from Millwall to Lyon – and even Hibs’ arch-rivals Hearts – congratulate the Hibbies; not on the cup victory, not on the performance of the team, but that of the crowd. “Even the riot police horses shedding tears there,” observes one.

[jacomo]

Wouldn’t be.a Gridian ;) article without three paragraphs turning into 25!


I’m all for long form journalism. There’s not enough of it imo.

There is also a real conversation to be had about crowds. Social distancing would destroy the sense of belonging and collective identity we saw at Hampden that day. It will probably destroy much that is enjoyable about going to a football match.

[nonshinyfinish]

I’m all for long form journalism. There’s not enough of it imo.

There is also a real conversation to be had about crowds. Social distancing would destroy the sense of belonging and collective identity we saw at Hampden that day. It will probably destroy much that is enjoyable about going to a football match.

Agreed.

It's also part of a series called "The long read", so it's hardly as if you click on a regular news story and get ambushed with a massive essay.