Caroline is becoming less sweet
TSuddenly it was everywhere. It was played in every sports stadium before every match
O YOUNGER Daughter it’s the Shopping List Song because it goes Swede-Carrot-Lime. To sports fans all over the world it has become ubiquitous. To Neil Diamond it must pay most of the household bills.
But Sweet Caroline has comprehensively jumped the shark, and it’s time to put it back into the catalogue of tunes to be heard once in a blue moon during nostalgic radio shows.
It should never – absolutely never – be played at football matches immediately after the home team scores a goal in a bid to inject atmosphere into the proceedings.
My three main wishes for Torquay United this season are that they become serious promotion candidates, that they have a bit of a cup run, and that they stop playing a jarring burst of Sweet Caroline over the stadium PA whenever the team scores a goal.
The phrase ‘to jump the shark’ is a product of the American TV sitcom Happy Days, which was a muchloved staple of the Seventies schedules – a warm tea-time presence at weekends.
It pinpoints the exact moment when something that up until that precise point had been really, really good becomes suddenly less good.
One Happy Days episode in 1977 had main character The Fonz waterskiing, and he escaped certain death in the jaws of a shark by jumping over it.
Happy Days went on for years after that, but critics pinpoint the jumping of the shark as the moment when things began to decline.
For me, Sweet Caroline jumped the shark in July this year. Up until then it had been mighty.
The loudest sound I ever heard – louder than a Vulcan bomber, louder than a Matra V12 engine, louder than a hungry baby at 3am – was in a mountain bar in Italy one snowy night when hundreds of beered-up Brits, Italians, Germans and Americans sang Sweet Caroline in unison at the tops of their voices, fuelled by Bombardino cocktails. Table tops became dance floors as the song united nations under the disco lights.
We put it on the jukebox one night at the Old Manor in Preston and an exuberant near-riot ensued in the pool and darts room. The stadium PA man at Torquay United used it magnificently before and after – but not during – a play-off match against Notts County at the end of last season, and for a while everyone was humming it.
Even Torquay boss Gary Johnson admitted to having the tune stuck inside his head for days afterwards.
It is a song that builds to a huge singalong chorus, and for a while the whole nation was singing it with gusto.
But suddenly it was everywhere. It was played in every sports stadium before every match. It was played throughout the European Championship football tournament.
It’s even on a TV advertisement now. I hope Neil Diamond is doing well out of it.
But it has become the musical equivalent of the hated Mexican wave – an artificial attempt to provoke excitement in a subdued crowd at a sports event – an elbow in the ribs from someone who thinks you aren’t enjoying yourself quite enough.
I’m not saying I never want to hear it again, but enough is enough.