Case Study: Vaudeville Smash’s viral World Cup anthem

Six years after their first live show and more than a year since the release of their debut album, Melbourne pop band Vaudeville Smash have gone viral with an unofficial anthem for the 2014 World Cup.

Zinedine Zidane typifies most World Cup songs – catchy melody coupled with earworm phrasing. Unless the track title didn’t give it away, the song is about retired soccer player Zidane.

Just over two weeks since release, the video has received more than 760,000 hits on YouTube, at an average increase of 10,000 views per day, has been tweeted by sports commentators from Fox Sports and ESPN plus our own Craig Foster, has featured in articles from Billboard, BBC World, The Independent and The Wire, and has received rotation on Virgin Radio in France and Dubai, as well as Norway’s biggest commercial television station TV2.

As lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Marc Lucchesi explains, “We grew up watching Zidane and are huge soccer fans. He’s the most elegant player I’ve ever seen – the Baryshnikov of the soccer field – and without a doubt one of the greatest of all time.

“However, we didn’t set out to write a song about him, the name came after the melody and the groove. Zinedine Zidane has a mantra like quality to it – when we heard it over the music we knew we had a hit.”

While the band are locally known for alt-disco and pop ballads, they were yet to top 20,000 views on any of their video releases before Zinedine Zidane. Much of the track’s success is owed to it featuring Australian sports journalist and soccer commentator Les Murray. Murray’s sonorous tone is what has made him one of the most recognised voices in TV sport industry; in fact, he is a member of Football Federation Australia’s (FFA) Football Hall Of Fame and retired this month from his position as Chief Football commentator on SBS.

Vaudeville Smash used what they call “three degrees of separation”, to get him on the track, asking their booking agent to call in a favour from an ex-Socceroo player.

“Originally, I was going to sing/rap the verses but we thought getting Les would give the track more credit in the soccer world and help it become the celebration of the game we wanted it to be,” says Marc. “He also has a very beautiful and distinctive voice. Our band booker is mates with Steve Horvath [ex-Socceroo] who’s great mates with Les. He worded Les up and then we simply asked.”

Less than a month later the band flew to Sydney on the second to last day of mixing and booked a session at Gigpiglet studios in Waterloo where Murray dropped in to record the bulk of the vocals.

Interestingly, Australia has been slow on the uptake. triple j is the only national radio station to play the track in full and although Channel [V] and Rage are on board, Triple M Sydney and Melbourne have only played segments of the track as part of their World Cup coverage.