I find that in general, the disc jockeys in our sports arenas are seriously lacking in imagination. It’s okay, songs that have been rolling non-stop for 40 years, like Eye of the Tiger or The Final Countdown. But there is one who particularly comes to seek me out. Negatively, you will understand. Boom boom clap. Boom boom clap. “Buddy you’re a boy, make a big noise…” Noooo. In 2023, the idea of playing We Will Rock You, by Queen, demonstrates for me a lazy desire to create a cheap atmosphere in an amorphous stadium. I really like Queen, don’t get me wrong. Especially at karaoke. But please, DJ, come up with new ideas. It’s not like the last 46 years haven’t been good in that regard.
Has there ever been a dumber song than Cotton Eye Joe in all of human history? Of course, The Duck Dance, Mister Roboto or any Magma Twins hit serves as solid competition to this list, but at least these musical disasters don’t turn out in an NHL arena. Except that in the world of hockey, for some reason, a great thinker decided one day that Cotton Eye Joe was the kind of unifying anthem that everyone would want to sing with their fists in the air to rally behind the team . Don’t look for the connection with hockey, there is none, zero, none, and Cotton Eye Joe should go to exactly the same place as the Canadian’s powder blue jersey: in the trash.
I Gotta Feeling, by the Black Eyed Peas. That’s enough. I haven’t been able to do this for years. Let’s stop playing it, period. I’m getting carried away, excuse her.
Covering the Canadian means hearing, night after night, the same songs at the same times. For example, a few colleagues and I recently heard Metallica’s For Whom the Bell Tolls at a bar in Tempe, Arizona. With surgical precision, we all imitated the sound of the siren at the exact moment in the play which corresponds to the start of the second period at the Bell Centre. So you have to have heard it once and again. All this to say that in my former civilian life, the one which led me, once or twice a year, to go and pay too much for a beer to see the CH play, I really liked the song Hey Ya!, by Outkast. When I started my new role, I was happy when, at the start of the first intermission, this 2003 hit resounded through the speakers to mark the arrival of the t-shirt cannon. “My baby don’t mess around/Because she loves me so…” Out of sight, I would even hum it. Something like 15,932 listens later, I don’t want to hear it anymore. Never, never, never. I can tolerate the Richard Cheese cover, but I can’t stomach the original version by Big Boi and André 3000. Sorry.
National anthems. Okay in the context of international competitions, such as the Olympic Games or the World Cup. But in season? It was logical to arouse surges of patriotism during the two great wars, when almost all baseball players came from the United States, and all hockey players from Canada. Today, it is less so. It is even divisive, as we have seen in the NFL in recent years, as well as in the NHL, during games between Canadian and American clubs after the United States military intervention in Iraq in 2003. Let us keep – them for major events only.
In the history of humanity, and throughout the world, there are few bands more overrated than Queen. Maybe Pearl Jam, but I digress. To save my life, I can’t name a single Queen song that I tolerate, much less enjoy. To my great misfortune, some of his works – a word used loosely – became part of the sports musical repertoire. It goes without saying that my hackles rise every time my ears come into contact with the unbearable We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions and Another One Bites the Dust.
I will go in the opposite direction of my comrades. Because I know this week’s theme was born from the idea that my beat friends have a complicated relationship with Fix You, the song on which the Canadiens players make their entrance, I’m here to set the record straight ‘hour: Fix You is a great song and I hope it resonates in the new forum for as long as possible. Even if album
And you, what song are you no longer able to hear in an arena or stadium, and why?
