Sheffield New Romantic Wednesday
Posted on February 20, 2008 | Filed under: Music | Tags: SheffWednesday | 1 Comment »
Yesterday I looked at Stoke City and their chances for promotion up to the EPL.
Today we go to the opposite end of the same league and one of the candidates for relegation:
Who knew.
Who would have thought that there was a link between the Thompson Twins (the band that is, not the cartoon characters) and Sheffield Wednesday. The Thompson Twins link is a tenuous one actually, but the other with one of the founders of the Human League and Heaven 17 is a certain:
Martyn Ware is Sheffield born and bred. A season ticket holder and loyal fan. On this
Sheffield Wednesday compilation album listing from Cherry Red Records it says:
“Martyn Ware (Heaven 17 & Human League) takes centre stage with 3 tracks (and the sleeve notes), but he is ably supported by Paul Carrack (Mike & The Mechanics) and The Thompson Twins who join the squad to sing “We Are The Owls”
Sadly though it doesn’t give any more detail than that, so I don’t know which three tracks he was involved with.
Once I do find that information I’ll come back to him because I am a big fan of his musical output.
But for now we turn to the other group mentioned above there – The Thompson Twins.
In the the quote it says that the band joined the squad to sing We Are The Owls but when you listen to the track all I can hear is rewritten lyrics done over the original instrumental.
As with many of the songs posted here I try to find out more about them, but there’s never anything out there. It is a pity that these footballing musical moments were not better recorded. I hope with my posting of these tunes that each song will be marked and noted and that any of the people involved in these outings will eventually leave a comment to provide some insight into their origins and reasons for release.
Getting back to this SWFC/TT “collaboration” – I don’t think the band were actually involved in this. I can’t find any written evidence anywhere that they were.
As to the song itself – Again there’s no info out there on why they took the TT song You Take Me Up and re-record it with new lyrics. There’s nothing that tells me when it was done either.
I don’t think it was done in the 80’s, when the team were in the old Division One.
At that time they were bobbling along, doing nothing spectacular. They were managed back then by Howard Wilkinson who didn’t win anything with them. He started collecting trophies after he left them for dirtyLeeds.
It could have been the early ’90’s. They had a brief resurgence and won the League Cup in 1991. (They went back to the Final in 1993 but lost to Arsenal).
To the music then and in this they are singing about flying high, which as you can see from the current tables….
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» Sheffield Wednesday FC – We Are The Owls
and the original…
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» Thompson Twins – You Take Me Up
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Hi, just a bit of extra information about this post…
The “we are the owls” single was recorded in 1984/85 when Sheffield Wednesday were promoted from the 2nd Divison to the 1st Division (what would now be the Premier League)
As you said – im not sure if TT were directly involved in the remake – but they must have been “fan enough” to authorise the use of their track.
SWFC have been quite prolific in producing team songs – Martyn particularly involved in various songs. I beleive Paul Carrack worked on the “If it’s Wednesday – it must be Wembley” track when SWFC reached two cupfinals in the 1993/94 season (losing to Arsenal on both occasions!
Thanks!