Not Alone

Some years ago I saw Elvis Costello give a great show at UCLA's Royce Hall, just him and Steve Nieve. And one of his 10 encores was an extremely unlikely cover: the Rodgers & Hammerstein anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone." I scratched my head, filed it in the Costello-will-try-any-style-once file, and moved on.

And then I read about Clive Owen's love for soccer in the New Yorker this week:

[Owen] was surrounded by about fifty boozy soccer fans, who stood beneath flat-screen TVs showing the Leeds United vs. Liverpool game, singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” the Liverpool anthem.

Looks like we can thank Costello's fellow Liverpudlians, Gerry and the Pacemakers, for popularizing a showtune with football supporters.