Many times you when you hear about a football players attempt at singing you ask yourself – Why ?
For what reason are they doing this ?
If it is for charity then fair enough. Buy the CD and donate it to an Oxfam shop afterwards.
Why do you do it ? What makes you suddenly think (at the time) that you are at the king of all football and everything you touch will turn to gold ? Who is it who advised you ? Did your manager or your agent see dollar signs in their eyes ?
You must – and addressing all footballers here past, present and future – to please sit down and think about it first. Phone your mates. Not your mates who have been around with you when you hit the big time, but your mate mates who knew you back when. Ask them if they think it is a good idea. Ask them – and this is the more important bit – if they think that you can sing.
The answer you’ll get back will always be. NO.
You have the talent with the outside of your boot when you make it curl around two defenders in front of you and just past the keepers reaching fingertips, but you don’t have the same when you stand in the studio reading out the lyrics. Trust me on this, you don’t.
Another big question is for the people who help these football stars get on record. These people are usually and unsurprisingly already in the music industry. So why ? You muso’s. Why do you do it ?
To use a footie cliché – at the end of the day you are there in the stands watching them play and you imagine yourself in their place. Even though you are on stage and are too performing to a crowd it’s not the same elation as a footballing crowd. In music your fame can be fleeting. Maybe forgotten about a few years down the line. But with football that, on the most part, doesn’t happen.
If you end up in a Premier League team, if you end up playing for England you are remembered. The fans years later will talk about the legendary Number 9 and the goals he scored. Something that you, even though you archived stardom in your own right, imagined yourself when you were a kid.
In this instance the guilty party who helped commit a musical crime is Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys.
Chris, originally from Blackpool is an Arsenal season ticket holder and obviously must have shared some prawn sandwiches with the players in the lounge after the match. At one of these receptions he got talking and they must have swapped stories of how he wanted to be a pop singer. The musician must have told Wrighty that he, like many kids, wanted to be a footballer.
It was too late for Chris Lowe now, he was old and the opportunity had passed, but he could help the Arsenal striker record something. In fact he went as far as writing and producing it for him.
» Ian Wright – Do The Right Thing
Brace yourself for the middle bit.
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