In honor of what was a tension filled and entertaining matchup between two of the truly legendary NFL franchises, (so “Super” that I didn’t do my radio show on KPFK just so I could watch former Cal Bear Aaron Rodgers and former Oakland Raider Mr. Woodson bring back the Lombardi trophy to “Titletown, U.S.A.”), I thought I’d take a time out to consider what is the greatest sports anthem of all time. Being a big sports fan for all my life, and having been to a number of games it was pretty easy to narrow down the list to just a couple of tracks that would deserve to be in the top 5, but it seemed much more intriguing to consider the two songs that were at the top of the list. Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions” both come from the same album, 1977’s News Of The World. They follow each other on that album and are generally played together on the radio and were also almost always performed together live. But they are two very different songs, the opening of “We Will Rock You” is one of the most ubiquitous sounds you’ll hear at a sporting event, probably multiple times, whereas “Champions” is a song that really only should be played at the end of the season. However I’m not sure there’s a more satisfying feeling that being on a sporting field having won a championship and having people spontaneously begin singing “We Are The Champions”…so what do you think, pound for pound, which song is THE greatest sports song of all time!
Here’s what I think is probably THE definitive performance of them both: