You'll Never Walk Alone
Lyrics
When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of a storm
There's a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone.
You'll never walk alone.
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone.
You'll never walk alone.
The song You'll Never Walk Alone by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (text) is the finale of the first performed in 1945 Broadway - musicals Carousel . The lyrics are about looking to the future with confidence. The song appears twice in the musical: the first time a pregnant woman is encouraged to get over the death of her husband. The second time (finale of the second act) the pupils of the final class and in particular the now 15-year-old daughter are encouraged.
After Frank Sinatra had already had success with his recording of the song in 1945, the Liverpool beat group Gerry & the Pacemakers published what is possibly the most famous cover of the song in 1963, which has since been heard as the stadium anthem at Liverpool FC . In the following decades, other clubs used the song as a stadium anthem and it was covered by numerous famous artists.
history
The musical premiered on April 19, 1945 at the Majestic Theater on Broadway and had 890 performances. On June 7, 1950, it premiered at the Drury Lane Theater in London ; here it reached 566 performances.
On May 1, 1945 Frank Sinatra was in the recording studio with the orchestra of Axel Stordahl and recorded the first single version of the song. It was released in September 1945 on Columbia Records (# 36825) and reached number 9 on the Billboard charts. Sinatra was also the one who wrote this song in a particularly worn, "anthemic" way in 1989 on the occasion of the inauguration of the 41st US President George HW Bush presented.
Well-known cover versions
In the UK , You'll Never Walk Alone topped the charts four times. George Martin produced the first cover version of the original with Gerry & the Pacemakers on July 2, 1963 , which was released on October 4, 1963 ( list of number one hits in the British charts (1963) ). The Pacemakers were from Liverpool and shared with the Beatles the manager Brian Epstein and the producer George Martin. Neither of them were initially convinced of the song's hit potential because it seemed too slow. This was followed by The Crowd ( June 1985 ) and Robson & Jerome as part of a medley ( November 1996 ). In the Crowd version, Gerry Marsden from Gerry & The Pacemakers was again the lead singer .
During the Corona crisis, Tom Moore and Michael Ball released a cover version as part of a fundraising campaign and reached first place in the British charts in April 2020 . At 99, Tom Moore was the oldest performer at the top of the charts and celebrated his 100th birthday in this position.
Other artists
There are other versions by different artists such as The Adicts , Alkbottle , Louis Armstrong , Chet Atkins , Shirley Bassey , Chris de Burgh , Glen Campbell , Ray Charles , Johnny Cash , Perry Como , Ray Conniff , Michael Crawford , Doris Day , Plácido Domingo , Dropkick Murphys , Aretha Franklin , Judy Garland , Mahalia Jackson , Tom Jones , Kelly Family , Cleo Laine , Mario Lanza , Jerry Lewis , Jim Nabors , Olivia Newton-John , Oak Ridge Boys , Roy Orbison , Elvis Presley , Dr. Ring Ding , The Righteous Brothers , Ryker’s , Michael Sadler , Nina Simone , Barbra Streisand , Chris Thompson , Kiri Te Kanawa , Conway Twitty , Gene Vincent and Dionne Warwick .
In the early 1990s, the song was also recorded for an American anti- AIDS campaign by various musicians such as Marilyn Horne , Joan Baez and LaBelle .
The song in football
The song became famous worldwide in football thanks to the Liverpool fan block The Kop . This was based on the hit by Gerry & the Pacemakers, who had played the title live from 1960 in Liverpool's Cavern Club . Already in the 1960s in England the audience was sounded before every game, mostly with current street hits . From 1963, this also included the version of the musical song You'll Never Walk Alone by Gerry & the Pacemakers. Legend has it that the sound system at the stadium on Anfield Road failed before a game while the song was playing. The fan block then intoned the song themselves. Since that day, the song has been sung by the audience before the start of the game in Liverpool, as a kind of anthem for the club. Since the Hillsborough spectator disaster in 1989, in which 96 Liverpool fans were killed, the words You'll Never Walk Alone have appeared in the Liverpool FC club crest, based on the song .
Other British clubs followed suit; the anthem is now also sung in many stadiums outside the British Isles . In November 2009 the 17-year-old student Alina Schmidt sang the song at the memorial service for Robert Enke in the AWD-Arena in Hanover . In Dortmund , too , the song is part of the fan culture at Borussia Dortmund's home games in the Westfalenstadion .
The football anthem has been reinterpreted many times, including by Bela B , The Lightning Seeds , The BossHoss (together with players from FC St. Pauli ), Die Toten Hosen and the Filipino "singing prodigy " Charice Pempengco . Even Pink Floyd used for the piece Fearless the album Meddle (1971) the Liverpool chants.
Radio campaign during the Corona crisis in March 2020
At the suggestion of a Dutch radio presenter, numerous European radio stations played the piece in the version by Gerry & the Pacemakers simultaneously in their programs. The action should symbolize the necessary solidarity of the entire European population in overcoming the pandemic . Friday, March 20, 2020 at 8:45 a.m. was set as the common date for the broadcast. Broadcasters in the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Romania, Austria, Spain, Cyprus and numerous other countries took part.
Trivia
In 2018, a Norwegian fan of Liverpool FC named his daughter "Ynwa" based on the song.
literature
- Jon Dennis: The Life of a Song: You'll Never Walk Alone . In: Financial Times , January 20, 2018, p. L & A14
- Malte Oberschelp: The hymn of football: “You'll never walk alone” - A cultural history publishing house Die Werkstatt, Göttingen: 2013.
- Reinhard Copyz: Football fan chants. A fanomenology. Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 1998. ISBN 3-8260-1495-2
Individual evidence
- ↑ lyrics; accessed on December 23, 2018.
- ↑ https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/panorama/nach-erfalt-mit-corona-spendenaktion-99-jaehriger-captain-tom-erobert-chart-spitze-mit-youll-never-walk-alone/25773050 .html Retrieved April 30, 2020
- ↑ You'll never walk alone - Music and football - moments of sport. In: www.momentedessports.at. Retrieved November 15, 2016 .
- ↑ How Borussia Dortmund simply stole an anthem
- ↑ https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000115936856/europaeische-radiosender-piele-youll-never-walk-alone-am-20-maerz
- ↑ Football fan calls his daughter Ynwa - you'll never walk alone. In: spiegel.de. Spiegel Online, February 6, 2018, accessed February 6, 2018 .