I thought I’d just write a quick response to Lotte’s earlier post on the topic of the Rugby World Cup song. It’s hard not to, when inspired by more magic from the staff at Stuff!
Here’s an excerpt from this story, which has the headline “Fans Cool on Rugby World Cup song”:
“I don’t really care about the rugby world cup, but The Feelers? Isn’t that like Nickelback singing at the superbowl,” wrote Kris Lane.
“Generally if the Feelers are playing I like to be Anywhere Else, Right Then,” wrote Ad Show reporter Simon Pound.
Comedian Dai Henwood wrote: “The Feelers cover ‘Right Here Right Now’ as the Rugby World Cup Jingle. Really?! quite glad a don’t watch union anymore.”
Remember, this is a story that is supposed to be telling us that fans don’t like the song, or to be precise that the song “been met with some reluctance by rugby supporters.” And these are the only quotes in the story. Let’s here set aside the fact that these people are not exactly off-the-street: All three “responses” were tweeted, (sorry Lotte), a fact explicitly stated in the story, but they are hardly middle New Zealand - all three are relatively high-profile in the New Zealand blogotweetosphere.
No, what’s interesting here is that two of these three people state quite clearly that they are not fans. In fact, nowhere in the story is there any mention of what these fabled Rugby Supporters actually think. Good one, Stuff.
These leads me to three possible conclusions: Firstly, the most obvious has already been covered - nobody over at Stuff is even trying, at all; secondly, rugby is dying - either we’re so saturated with it that nobody cares, or hardcore support genuinely is restricted to an insular minority; or lastly, and also likely, that the sort of people this kind of thing is aimed at will take whatever they’re fed and that what they’re being fed here (familiar, non-challenging, hyper-processed to the point that my ears just hear an insipid morass of compressed jangle-and-cymbals) is fine by them. After all, it’s going to sit beside stuff on RadioWorks stations that sounds exactly the same.
The comments column is, as always, enlightening:
“it is a GREAT song!! if you don’t like the Feelers you ain’t a Kiwi - end of story! perfect band for the event, perfect sound. I love it!” says Jen P. “@ Jen P #242 I am a kiwiw and i am sorry to say but they have just failed on an epic scale. The Feelers are dated and the song is S**t. Just heard there cover of it on tele and all i can say is just from that we deserve to lose the rugby” replies N the Middle.
