Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Shortage of spine-tingling national anthems

Watching the preliminaries of the South Africa v France game, it struck me that this was one of the very rare occasions when there were two national anthems back-to-back that really did the job they're supposed to of summoning up the blood. In fact, off the top of my head I can only think of four countries' anthems that I would really put in the 'spine-tingling' class -

South Africa
France
Russia
Germany


Of course there are a second tranche of anthems like Flower of Scotland and Land of My Fathers that get under your skin after you've heard them a few times, but they don't have quite the same instant hook.

It's not as if the world is short of inspirational music, so why do most countries always plump for the irredeemably banal and dreary? The petition to 10 Downing Street a few years ago calling for God Save the Queen to be replaced with Gold by Spandau Ballet may have been tongue-in-cheek, but in some ways I think they had a point.

2 comments:

  1. Ezio Auditore da Firenze - Wearing Scipio's HelmetJune 22, 2010 at 10:29 PM

    I feel like I should put a word in for the wonderful Fratelli d'Italia!

    ReplyDelete
  2. But not as wonderful as L'inno della Fiorentina, surely, Ezio?

    ReplyDelete