Saturday, June 07, 2014

World Cup of Soccer: Theme time

The great thing about the World Cup being in Brazil is the massive range of options this offers the BBC for choosing a theme tune.

Who have they gone with? Seu Jorge? Nação Zumbi? Maria Rita?

Oh, man, I bet they've gone with Maria Rita. Imagine kicking off every Match of the Day with this:

But it's so difficult to choose. So many great local artists. So many distinctive local genres and sub-genres. How do you choose one to drench your Brazilian soccer coverage in a sense of place?

What have you chosen, BBC?

Stevie Wonder's song Another Star will provide the theme tune for the BBC's Fifa World Cup coverage.

The song, with its Latin American vibe, will be used as the opening sequence for all of the BBC's World Cup programmes for Brazil 2014.
Ah, yes. How better to get a "Latin American vibe" than by approaching someone from Michigan?

I suppose Brazil only has itself to blame. If just one of its artists had ever produced a single track which sounded even half-way as Latin American, they'd probably have been in with a shot of providing a tune for the event.

Perhaps it's elaborate social commentary from BBC Sport, reflecting how the World Cup has seen Brazilians shoved aside to make room for multinational brands to make money off of soccer.

The BBC is keen to stress the sort-of-historic significance of 'man licences track to broadcaster':
It is the first time the musician, 64, has given his approval for one of his songs to be used in this way.
Perhaps that's true, but this is the man who supplied the entire soundtrack for The Woman In Red, so let's not pretend opening with a Wonder song is automatically a blessing for all involved.


No comments:

Post a Comment

As a general rule, posts will only be deleted if they reek of spam.