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The 2026 World Cup in Mexico, Canada and the USA has begun. The opening ceremony on Thursday (June 11th) brought spectacular performances from Shakira, Burna Boy and a lot of Latin music (you can read about who was there HERE).
But the evening is of course all about football. Hosts Mexico and South Africa will play the opening game at the Aztec Stadium in Mexico City. Right at the beginning there is a surprise: FIFA has decided that not only the eleven players on the pitch will come onto the pitch for the national anthem, but the entire squad. There are now more than 20 players in a circle on each side.
But what’s also exciting is the music the teams came to the stadium to. This is a now legendary sports anthem that was not originally written for this purpose at all. It’s “Sirius,” the prologue piece from the album “Eye In The Sky” by Alan Parsons Project from 1982.
The Chicago Bulls made “Sirius” famous
But the sport has basketball to thank for the fact that it has long since become a goosebumps introduction for football teams. The Chicago Bulls chose “Sirius” as their accompanying music in front of their own audience in 1984 and subsequently found many imitators.
Tommy Edwards, the Chicago Bulls’ announcer at the time, happened to hear the song in a Chicago theater as background music before the main film. He was immediately captivated by the synthesizer riff and thought it might be the perfect music for the Bulls’ player introductions.
Because there are rarely coincidences in sports: 1984 also marked the year in which Michael Jordan joined the Chicago Bulls. The marketing team was looking for a spectacular way to turn the home games into a real event, which included the Alan Parsons Project hit and the trick of turning off the hall lights completely shortly before the game.
“Sirius” has long since become very popular entrance music in football stadiums. In Germany, the song is used by Eintracht Frankfurt, FC Augsburg and VfL Wolfsburg, among others. Internationally, the audience and the Manchester City team are also pushing themselves with the music.
What you need to know about the song
The song is named after the brightest star in the night sky, also known as the “Dog Star”. Alan Parsons created the famous motif while experimenting with a clavinet, an electric string keyboard. Here he programmed a short, hammering tone pattern. Anyone who listens to the album “Eye In The Sky” in its entirety will also experience how “Sirius” seamlessly transitions into the title song, which has also become a success.
However, Alan Parsons and his songwriting partner Eric Woolfson initially barely noticed anything about US sports usage. It wasn’t until Parsons watched a Bulls game on television years later that he realized the magnitude (and enjoyed the royalties). He often joked in interviews that his most famous work is a song in which no one sings and was actually just intended as a short intro to a completely different song.