Submitted
for your approval this week are both sides of the horrific 1988 release from Liverpool
Football Club,
Anfield Rap, and its B-side
Anfield Rap (Red Machine Dub) was issued
ahead of the 1988 FA Cup Final against Wimbledon
FC. Written by Liverpool's midfielder
Craig Johnston (and, apparently, an uncredited Derek B), the song reached number 3 in the UK Singles Chart. Supposedly
the record was meant as a ‘parody’ of Hip Hop, British rap and a send up of the
fact that there were so few local players in the current Liverpool team. According
to Johnston: “They were all Scots, Irish, Welsh, a Dane, a Zimbabwean, an
Australian.
“The
whole thing was about the dressing room craic. It was about McMahon and
Aldridge and accents and how the other lads didn't talk like them.” John
Aldridge and Steve McMahon were the only two native Liverpudlians in the
regular line up: the other players featured included John Barnes (predating his appearance on the equally terrible football-related
record, the England New Order 45 World In Motion by two years), Bruce
Grobbelaar, Alan Hansen, and Jan Molby. The record also featured manager Kenny
Dalglish, ITV football commentator Brian
Moore plus archived voice clips from former manager Bill Shankly and a badly sampled section of The Beatles’ version of Twist
and Shout.
In
his 2012 article Why are Sports Songs so
Hard to get Right, the BBC’s Mark Savage credited the song as "the
worst offender... an inexplicably awful track, which sees grown men struggle
with the cadence of spoken English.” It also, as Savage points out “rhymes ‘hard
as hell’ with ‘Ars-e-nell’.”
Sadly
Derek B passed away at the
ridiculously young age of 44 in 2009. I believe most of the other aural offenders
are still extant.
Enjoy!
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