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

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 – The Thompson Twins.

In the quote it says that the band joined the squad to sing We Are The Owls but when you listen all you can hear is rewritten lyrics 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. I can’t find any written evidence to confirm.

As to the song itself – Again there’s no info on why they took the TT song You Take Me Up and redid it with new lyrics. 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 but he didn’t win anything with them.) 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…

Sheffield Wednesday 85

» Sheffield Wednesday FC – We Are The Owls

2 Replies to “Sheffield New Romantic Wednesday”

  1. 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!

  2. Just came across this page whist checking something before I wrote a blog post about a Sheffield Wednesday song (“Steel City”).

    During the 83-84 promotion season, You Take Me Up…To Division One was sung on the terraces. Tom Bailey is a SWFC fan and was happy for the song to be recorded. I remember reading something at the time saying that the Thompson Twins were going to re-record the song. Don’t know whether the version that came out was the one they were talking about.

    As for the Heaven 17 connection, I do know that If it’s Wednesday… (1993) and Steel City (move on up) from 1986 were both written/recorded by Martyn Ware and Ian Reddington (Tricky Dicky from EastEnders).

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