You'll Never Walk Alone - Sporting Anthem

Sporting Anthem

In the United Kingdom, the song's most successful recording was released in 1963 by the Liverpudlian Merseybeat group Gerry and the Pacemakers (peaking at number one in the singles chart for four consecutive weeks).

The song quickly became the anthem of Liverpool Football Club and is invariably sung by its supporters moments before the start of each home game. The words "You'll Never Walk Alone" also feature in the club crest and on the Shankly Gate entrance to Anfield, the home stadium.

According to former player Tommy Smith, Gerry Marsden presented Liverpool manager Bill Shankly with a tape recording of his forthcoming cover single during a pre-season coach trip in the summer of 1963. "Shanks was in awe of what he heard. Football writers from the local newspapers were travelling with our party and, thirsty for a story of any kind between games, filed copy back to their editors to the effect that we had adopted Gerry Marsden's forthcoming single as the club song."

Marsden himself told BBC Radio how, in the 1960s, the DJ at Anfield would play the top-ten commercial records in ascending order, with the number one single transmitted last, shortly before kickoff. Spectators would sing along, but unlike with other hit singles, once "You'll Never Walk Alone" dropped out of the top-ten, instead of dropping the song, supporters continued to sing along.

The song was later adopted by Scottish team Celtic F.C., Dutch teams Feyenoord, FC Twente and SC Cambuur, Germany's Borussia Dortmund, Mainz 05, 1. FC Kaiserslautern, Borussia Mönchengladbach, Alemannia Aachen, FC St Pauli, SV Darmstadt 98, Belgium's Club Brugge and Japan's F.C. Tokyo.

The Pink Floyd song "Fearless", from their 1971 album Meddle, includes a recording of the Liverpool Kop singing "You'll Never Walk Alone". The recording is repeated many times during the song and appears solely as a conclusion at the end of the track.

A special recording of the song was made in solidarity with Bradford City following the Valley Parade fire in 1985, when 56 spectators died and many more were seriously injured. The song was performed by The Crowd, featuring Gerry Marsden, Paul McCartney and Rolf Harris, among others.

Some years later, after witnessing a rendition of "You'll Never Walk Alone" at Anfield in 2007, the President of the Spanish Olympic Committee, Alejandro Blanco, said he felt inspired to seek lyrics to his country's wordless national anthem, the Marcha Real, ahead of Madrid's bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games.

The song was also performed by 17-year-old highschool student Alina Schmidt at the public funeral of German football goalkeeper Robert Enke (who had committed suicide after years of depression) to an audience of 45,000 at his team's Hanover's stadium on November 15, 2009.

The song was sung by supporters of the A-League team Brisbane Roar to commemorate the victims of the 2010–2011 Queensland floods at the 2011 A-League Grand Final.

In September 2012 the song peaked to number 1 on iTunes following an online campaign by Liverpool fans to raise awareness for those who lost their lives in the Hillsborough tragedy. The campaign to get the song back into the UK Singles Chart was started by Liverpool Walton MP, Steve Rotheram, on September 14 2012 following the release of the Hillsborough Independent Panel report. The report revealed that police had tampered with witness statements and that 41 of the 96 lives lost at Sheffield Wednesday's stadium on 15 April 1989, could have been saved. "People have asked what they can do now. If you download You’ll Never Walk Alone, it will send a message to the rest of the country," Mr Rotheram said on Twitter. He added "Just spoke to Gerry Marsden who is supporting YNWAno1 and will donate any proceeding to Hillsborough charities. Great gesture. Great man." On September 16, 2012 the song entered the UK Singles Chart at number 12 selling over 28,000 copies in just over 24 hours.