Opinion Revisiting An Old Subject - "Substandard Club Songs"

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I hate the West Coast song, it's such an earworm and gets stuck in my head like a Taylor Swift song. Luckily I haven't heard it for a while.

So you’re saying it’s perfection?
 

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If an NRL team can do it then why can't an AFL club ??

Yes, it's an old subject but let's be realistic, at least half of the clubs in the AFL are in desperate need of a new or completely revamped club song.

The Giants came into the competition and unveiled a a terrific song so why do so many of the older clubs persist with their current uninspiring, limp & thoroughly boring club songs ??


Richmond & GWS are both big rousing singalongs that get the crowd into it.

Gold Coast tries hard but just doesn't get there.

Collingwood, Sydney, Hawthorn, Carlton, Footscray, Essendon, Geelong, Melbourne are borderline acceptable but could do with an increase in tempo & a reworking, they really lack the "punch" the first two have.

West Coast, Brisbane, Fremantle, Adelaide, St. Kilda, Port Adelaide & North Melbourne are simply horrible.



Assuming some of the clubs wanted to make a change, then what process do they go through to do it ??

Should they take an old song and rework/reword it (eg. "Madison Blues" for Carlton), take a recent song & reword it (eg. "Highway To Hell" for Melbourne) or throw caution to the wind and get some songwriters to come up with a brand new tune ??
 
A: Richmond, Carlton, Hawthorn, St Kilda, North Melb, GWS
B: Collingwood, Geelong, Melbourne
C: Sydney, Essendon
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D: Bulldogs, Adelaide
E: Fremantle, Brisbane
F: West Coast, Port Adelaide, Gold Coast

I like your enthusiasm here but cannot agree with a fair bit of your rankings.
 

If an NRL team can do it then why can't an AFL club ??

Yes, it's an old subject but let's be realistic, at least half of the clubs in the AFL are in desperate need of a new or completely revamped club song.

The Giants came into the competition and unveiled a a terrific song so why do so many of the older clubs persist with their current uninspiring, limp & thoroughly boring club songs ??


Richmond & GWS are both big rousing singalongs that get the crowd into it.

Gold Coast tries hard but just doesn't get there.

Collingwood, Sydney, Hawthorn, Carlton, Footscray, Essendon, Geelong, Melbourne are borderline acceptable but could do with an increase in tempo & a reworking, they really lack the "punch" the first two have.

West Coast, Brisbane, Fremantle, Adelaide, St. Kilda, Port Adelaide & North Melbourne are simply horrible.



Assuming some of the clubs wanted to make a change, then what process do they go through to do it ??

Should they take an old song and rework/reword it (eg. "Madison Blues" for Carlton), take a recent song & reword it (eg. "Highway To Hell" for Melbourne) or throw caution to the wind and get some songwriters to come up with a brand new tune ??
What? North Melbourne have one of the better songs
 
The only one that needs changing in the West Coast song. Genuinely feel sorry for Eagles fans.
 

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What's the players' association doing? They need to get the next agreement to exclude them from having to do this crap. Never mind the quality of the song.
 
A: Richmond, Carlton, Hawthorn, St Kilda, North Melb, GWS
B: Collingwood, Geelong, Melbourne
C: Sydney, Essendon
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D: Bulldogs, Adelaide
E: Fremantle, Brisbane
F: West Coast, Port Adelaide, Gold Coast
Carlton's song has a decent opening couple of bars of intro and then is the dullest song ever written. Sydney deserves to be in the As. Can't argue with the rest
 
Carlton's song has a decent opening couple of bars of intro and then is the dullest song ever written. Sydney deserves to be in the As. Can't argue with the rest
Sydney's sounds special to a lot of us older Port supporters as the club borrowed it from South Melbourne back in the 1960's or70s I think and after changing it to black and white it became our club song in the sanfl
 
If the fans of the given club are attached to the song, why should supporters of any other club give a s**t?

Sure, some of them are old and a bit dreary by modern standards. But musical tastes change, if clubs had updated to 90s hip hop or grunge versions that would have dated horribly within a few years. There's nothing wrong with a bit of tradition, so long as the relevant fans back it.
 
The definitive rankings:

A: Melbourne, Richmond, GWS, Sydney
B: North Melbourne, St Kilda
C: Geelong, Collingwood, Hawthorn, Adelaide, Essendon, Carlton
D: West Coast, Fremantle, Gold Coast, Port Adelaide, Western Bulldogs, Brisbane
Loyalties and intangible sentimentality aside... North gets a B- for the chorus.

The clumsy and awkward key shifts and time signature changes between the "hearts to hearts" bit, the "out we come" bit, and the chorus are D-level.

But you could make it an A grade club song by keeping 95% of the lyrics* and re-writing the chord progression for the whole bit up until "join in the chorus" so it actually has melodic and rhythmic coherence.

*I don't reckon the "god bless our native land" bit holds up so well in 2024.
 

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