Thursday, Aug. 11, 2011

Liverpool FC

There's a delicious irony that one of English soccer's most sublime ever squads, the nearly all-conquering Liverpool team of 1987–88, could come up with one of the worst atrocities ever perpetrated in the history of recorded music. There is a long-standing tradition for the two teams that contest the FA Cup final (the nearest U.S. sporting comparison might be the Super Bowl) to release a single as part of the buildup. No doubt jumping on the 1980s hip-hop bandwagon, "Anfield Rap" liberally riffs off LL Cool J's "Rock the Bells" and Eric B. & Rakim's "I Know You Got Soul" (and, Liverpool FC not wishing to upset the locals, uses elements of "Twist and Shout" by the Beatles). All these years on, it remains as cringeworthy to watch and listen to ("They've won the league with bigger stars than Dallas/ They've got more silver than Buckingham Palace," go some of the lyrics) as it did upon its release in 1988 (when it somehow reached No. 3 on the U.K. chart). Almost as shocking as the song was that Liverpool actually lost the ensuing soccer match to the minnows of Wimbledon in one of the biggest upsets in FA Cup history.