Stijn Van de Voorde on the European Championship anthem: “The U2 popup that will never live on the pitch” | Special

On paper, it’s a bit odd mix, DJ Martin Garrix, U2 duo Bono, and The Edge. Stijn Van de Voorde isn’t surprised that UEFA ended up with these artists.

“Usually they just pick a few big names. They put this together almost mathematically: with U2 we’re serving the older generation, Martin Garrix more for the young, so to speak. In UEFA, they clearly didn’t allow themselves to be guided by musical motives.” Purely. “

“It amazes me that they are all white artists. I would have thought they involved someone of color at this time. Or they chose something a little more hip-hop.”

“Once you’ve done that job, you can of course not turn back and then be stuck in something like that. It often happens, that you are then with a savage you can only pull off if the artist in question has something of their own. The sleeves. Suddenly appears, as it is.” The case with Damso in Belgium. “

However, it is not an ear bug. “The problem is that they combined a U2 song with Martin Garrix’s beats. That doesn’t make a really exciting song. This isn’t a song they’ll sing on the court.”

What, according to Steen van de Forde, would have been a guarantee of success? “I don’t like to say it, but really you need something like Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike. Music is where you can turn your mind to zero.”

“You cannot neglect marginalization and I don’t mean this wrong. It makes sense for people to revert to a certain primitive instinct when scoring a goal. Then you quickly sing” Olé Olé “or something like” 7 Nation Army, “a basic tune that everyone can sing.”

“I even find this moving, when the whole pitch sings a song that you would never have sung or sung because you find it so flat.”

“I understand they want to send a signal from UEFA in a certain way. Which is why songs like this are always filled with so many messages – friendship, teamwork, the European idea – that you forget it’s about football.”

“But this is not a song that will appear on the stadium. Something like that has to come from the fans themselves, you can’t force something like that from the top.”

“You will always see that there is a lot of success in that period that has nothing to do with football, but that has a lot of qualities that you need on the field. A good example of this is” Freed From Desire, “which is an ongoing song.”