Sports idioms in Top Ten music (1951-2014)
Musicians Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley kicking around a soccer ball backstage
The speech we use in our everyday lives is peppered with language created in specific professional domains for particular reasons, often without our knowledge. Cooking, agriculture, and business, for instance, are all domains from which nonmembers borrow vocabulary, idioms, and metaphors, and music and sports are two others. In this post, I briefly introduce to you some of the idioms that pop music, as represented by the Billboard year-end Top 10 songs (1951-2014), has taken from the wide world of sports and incorporated into lyrics for a wide range of musical styles and across a large span of years.
In alphabetical order, then chronologically (and with the name of the sport where the idiom is considered to have originated in parentheses), these are:
1. down and out (boxing)
Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" as performed live in 1969; the song was written by Paul Simon and, according to Billboard's year-end Top 100, was the top song of 1970
"Y.M.C.A." by the Village People (1978), which was #8 on Billboard's year-end Top 100 chart for 1979
Steve Winwood's "Roll with It" (1988), which was #10 on the Billboard year-end Top 100 chart for 1988, was written by the legendary Motown songwriting team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, as well as Winwood, and Will Jennings
2. hands down (horse racing)
Bill Hayes' version of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" (1955), which was #6 on Billboard's year-end chart for 1955; another version of the song by Fess Parker came in at #22 that year
3. roll with the punches (boxing)
Van Halen's "Jump" (1984), which appeared at #6 on Billboard's year-end Top 100 for 1984
4. sidelines (football)
Don McLean performing "American Pie" at the BBC in 1972. Also penned by McLean, the song appeared at #3 on Billboard's year-end Top 100 charts for 1972.
5. slam dunk (basketball)
"Whoomp! (There It Is)" (1993) by Tag Team appeared at #2 on Billboard's year-end Top 100 chart.
6. throw in the towel (boxing)
Brandy and Monica's "The Boy is Mine" (1998) appeared at #2 on Billboard's year-end Top 100 chart.
7. touchdown (among other sports idioms in the song; rugby, later American football)
Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" (2005) came in at #2 on the Billboard Top 100 chart in 2005.
8. workout (boxing)
Sir MixALot's "Baby Got Back" (1992) came in at #2 on Billboard's year-end Top 100 chart for 1992.
To see the etymologies for these and other words and idioms, see The Online Etymology Dictionary.
For a word search on these idioms, click here.