At the Harvard Square in Boston, a bistro is playing John Denver’s ageless classic Country Roads on a loop from a pair of rickety loudspeakers. A few youngsters chime in and begin an impromptu singalong, “Take me home, country roads…” The man behind the cash table quips: “Poor, John didn’t think it would become a World Cup song.”
Denver composed the first lines of the song in 1971, while travelling through Maryland with his friends for a concert in West Virginia, met with an accident, broke his thumb, completed the day he got discharged and performed it live the next day. He died in 1997, when the experimental aircraft he was flying crashed into Monterey Bay in California.
Even though he dabbled with numerous genres, Denver’s country folk-songs, that spoke of nature and simple country life, would live on for decades as cultural symbols. But he would not have imagined that the song about longing and nature would become the USMNT’s post-match singalong at the World Cup and strike a chord among the fans and players, blasted in arenas and public spaces from Seattle to Miami, California to Alaska.
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The moment the match ends, Denver’s wistful, quivering voice, accompanied by an acoustic guitar, takes over. The players hum it, the crowd takes on, and even the Argentine coach Maurico Pochettino tries to whistle the song.
It has struck a chord with the players. Defender Auston Trusty would say. before the final group game: “I think ‘Country Roads’ is a very American song, and to hear it in that stadium, with everyone singing along, it’s a dream come true. It’s feelings that you can’t really describe,” defender Auston Trusty would say.
Even those raised outside the country like Folarin Balogun said he could relate with the song. “My mother knows all the lines. I have heard it a thousand times. It is a soft but inspiring song,” he said. “Part of being American is knowing ‘Country Roads’,” defender Chris Richards said. His Dutch-Surinamese-American teammate Sergiño Dest reflected: “It’s a nice song, it’s a nice song … It fits the moment. After the game, it was nice to see everybody singing, and we listen a lot to that song also in the dressing room.” The song, reportedly, was heard from coach Pochettino’s office as well.
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The story behind how the song became the anthem is fascinating too. It was not among the songs the team members recommended when FIFA sought them about the songs they wanted to play during breaks. Their recommendations were “WIN” by Jay Rock, “The Show Goes On” by Lupe Fiasco, “Livin’ on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi and “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. America should be spoiled for choice because of its vast spread of music and music-movements, from jazz and blues to hip-hop and R&B, not to forget the various rock and metal bands it had birthed.
But FIFA’s World Cup chief strategy officer, Amy Hopfinger, who had worked with the USA counterpart for nearly two decades, felt something was amiss. Most of the songs, she felt, couldn’t produce the mass appeal. “I heard Win after the Paraguay game and felt it didn’t have that shared moment,” she told New York Post.
She probed for more suggestions from her ex-colleagues. The association finally homed in on Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline, only to realise that England and the Netherlands had also submitted the song among their in-stadia playlist. “I decided to act on myself, I overruled Sweet Caroline and replaced it with Country Roads,” she said.
Eventually, Country Roads and Livin’ on a Prayer made it. But the Bon Jovi chartbuster, though more energetic, couldn’t establish a distinct connection that could rally the masses. Even the Australian fans jived to it when it was played during the break in Seattle’s Lumen Stadium.
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The choice song surprised some of the fans, because its considered a sombre song, not that would rush the adrenaline on a sports field. “I thought it was a bit odd when I heard it for the first time,” says Kenneth Jones, part of the fan group American Outlaws. “But when the crowd began to sing along like a chorus in Seattle, I thought it was splendid and it elevated the atmosphere. And of course, it’s a song with profound meaning,” he adds.
Various football clubs in England had adopted and tweaked the Country Roads. Manchester United famously improvised the lines: “Take Me Home, United Road”. But now in its original home, Denver’s ode to West Virginia and Appalachian Mountain Ranges has discovered a resonance again. “I wish to hear it on July the 19th,” Jones says. As would the entire country.
