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Justice for the Ninety‐Six : Liverpool FC fans and uncommon use of football song

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 12; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14660970.2011.530476

1743-9590

Ben Power,

Sport and Mega-Event Impacts

Recent scholarship concerning football supporter song has largely focused on its common uses, such as identity construction and performance, particularly during the match and in relation to opposition fans. This article examines two unusual uses of football song by supporters of Liverpool Football Club that transcend that usual sort of singing. It argues that in singing for justice for the victims of Hillsborough for six minutes at the beginning of a high profile televised match, and in using the same song to sing down Andy Burnham, the then minister for Sport, at a memorial, Liverpool fans sang beyond the normal bounds of their sporting performance. In musically unifying their protest, they created a cultural object of significant power, able to resonate through the media in unusual ways and in doing that, they colonized space beyond the stadium with their collective identity and ideology. These two exceptional uses of song by Liverpool football fans reveal a fundamental shift in both the scope and the cultural resonance of football supporter singing.