Friday on My Mind: We Are the Champions!

It’s time again for Friday on My Mind. Our weekly blog post where we look at videos centered around one common theme. This is a collaborative effort between KEXP and King 5 News.

This past Wednesday, the Seattle Seahawks returned home as heroes. This city has waited to celebrate a national championship victory like this for 35 years, the last time being when the Supersonics won the 1979 NBA championship. The Seattle Police Department believes that 700,000 fans turned out to welcome the Seahawks home, which is particularly crazy considering Seattle’s city limits population is supposed to be just over 634,000. That’s a lot of 12th Men. Seattle Schools were open, but it was reported that 565 teachers and 13,523 students were absent from school on Wednesday. Downtown Seattle was an ocean of green and blue. Fans braved the 29 degree weather in order to catch a glimpse of the winning team and this city’s first ever Vince Lombardi Trophy, all while being pelted with Skittles. The Seahawks paid for the whole parade, which began south of Seattle Center at Denny Way just around the corner from us here at KEXP. The procession then travelled south on 4th Avenue past Westlake Park and finished at the north entrance of CenturyLink Field. At 12:12pm, Governor Jay Inslee declared that there be a “Moment of Loudness” and with 700,000 people on hand, it was not a difficult task to accomplish. I was out and about amongst the crowd with my son on my shoulders. We cheered the conquering heroes and it’s a memory that we’ll never forget.

Hot off the heels of yesterday’s fanfare, here are songs to commemorate our win... Fatboy Slim - Right Here, Right Now We go back to 1999 for our first victory song, “Right Here, Right Now” by Fatboy Slim aka Norman Cook. Before he became Fatboy Slim, Cook was the bassist for the UK group The Housemartins, which also featured members of The Beautiful South. I think that “Right Here, Right Now” is easily the best way to pump up a team, a crowd, a small pack of dogs, anyone. This is the perfect anthem for what we have right here, right now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7jSp2xmmEE Cake - The Distance It’s amazing how a team can play so well during an entire year, but still be considered failures if they don't go the distance. That leads us to our next song choice, from 1996, “The Distance” by Cake. Here is their performance of the song back in June 2011 during on the David Letterman show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsYWoXT_UEw Queen - We Are the Champions

“We Are the Champions” was released as a single in October 1977. In 2011, “We Are the Champions” was named the most catchiest song in the history of pop music. It was playing on Wednesday as the Seahawks rode by the crowds, waving their "12" flags, while Lynch was tossing Skittles off of a duck. I love Seattle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04854XqcfCY Honorable Mention:

U2 - Beautiful Day “Beautiful Day” was released as a single in October 2000. “Beautiful Day” is what U2 considered to be a return to their earlier sounds after many years in other musical directions. Here is the official video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co6WMzDOh1o Empire of the Sun - Alive From their Ice on the Dune release from last year, our next choice is “Alive” by Empire of the Sun. It feels pretty good to be alive these days, especially if you are a Seattle Seahawks fan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPKAwJKGSDc