Tennis Band Alright We re Here Again
We've all heard of professional footballers side-hustling as pop singers for a i-off single or album, but what about lawn tennis pros? Do they have a like desire to perform novelty pop songs to augment their fame when they're at the top of their game? And how almost after their career on the court is over?
If annihilation, the competitive tennis thespian is inculcated with a unmarried-minded desire to win that's transferable, even to something equally supposedly lighthearted equally music. So, every bit Wimbledon begins, hither are nine champs who have served up something musical...
John McEnroe
[LISTEN] BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs: John McEnroe
The famously fiery New Yorker won more than 150 ATP titles in his playing career - including seven Thou Slam trophies - and was world No.i for an impressive iv years at the peak of his powers in the late 70s and early 80s. And so he hung upward his racket and replaced it with a six string, jamming skillful with Clapton and Santana, only not David Bowie...
"I've long been a David Bowie fan," McEnroe told Kirsty Immature on Desert Isle Discs last yr. "When I started to learn how to play guitar I was here in London getting fix for Wimbledon, and it turned out [Bowie and I] were staying in the same hotel. And then I'm playing Suffragette City - I'm butchering it very badly - and after a period of a few minutes I get a knock on the door, and I open the door and it'southward David Bowie. And he looks at me and he says, 'Hey John, I heard y'all were here, it's corking to meet y'all. Would you like to come for a beverage?' And I idea, 'Oh my God, David Bowie is asking me upstairs for a drink.' And then I said, 'Yeah!' and he said, 'Don't bring the guitar.'"
McEnroe was taught to play by Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde, with the loosening of his strumming arm possibly coinciding with his pass up as a player. He has performed their song Precious as a guest of the band at a number of live shows, and he fifty-fifty soloed on Hynde's debut 2022 solo album Stockholm, named after Sweden'south capital letter urban center. It wouldn't exist the commencement time John has gone on the attack with a globe class Swedish No.1 in his thoughts.
Andy Murray
"You lot have to be all-in in annihilation you practice whether it'due south music or sport," said McEnroe in the same Desert Island Discs interview, and that's advice three-time Grand Slam and ii-time Olympic champion Andy Murray should have perhaps heeded. Back in 2009, when the quondam world No.1 but had a decent run in the The states Open to boast about, he was talked into dropping a few bars on a song called Autograph. The novelty record made by American identical twins the Bryan Brothers - who are serial doubles champions themselves - features a rap by the Scottish thespian as well every bit i from baseline battling Serb Novak Djokovic.
"During Wimbledon, it really gets crazy," spits Murray. "My hand cramps up and my listen gets hazy." In his unmistakably sardonic Dunblane burr, Murray goes on to complains farther about the rigours of signing autographs, an unwelcome byproduct of fame that'due south at least been assuaged slightly since the proliferation of the selfie. The Guardian unkindly claimed Murray's cameo is ane of "the v worst raps you'll ever hear".
Vania King
The American doubles specialist was queen of the swingers aslope her Kazakhstani partner Yaroslava Shvedova when the pair won both the Wimbledon and US Open doubles tournaments in 2010. When Vania's not swinging she'south singing, and does more than only warble in the shower.
In August 2009, the Long Beach native performed a rousing Star-Spangled Banner at the 56,000 capacity LA Dodgers Stadium and followed that upwardly with a well-received version at the US Open. Injury forced King out of lawn tennis for a flavour in 2022 just she and her doubles partner reunited and performed respectably at concluding yr'south Australian Open up, cheered on past her song supporters.
Pat Cash
In that location must be something nearly the shape of rackets and guitars that makes lawn tennis players gravitate from ane to the other. Pat Cash, 1987 Wimbledon winner, holds the honour of being the second about famous ex-lawn tennis playing champion to choice upward an axe and wield it like a strangulated python. The five time Grand Slam finalist has jammed on stage with boyfriend countrymen INXS, who played at the Australian Open up in 2003 (post-Michael Hutchence), and he also teamed upwards with McEnroe and the Full Metal Rackets - a supergroup fabricated upward of The Who'due south Roger Daltrey and Atomic number 26 Maiden's Steve Harris and Nicko McBrain - for a version of Led Zeppelin'southward Stone and Roll in 1991 (information technology made No.66 in the charts).
Greenbacks is also bosom buddies with Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith. In a 'how we met' piece for the Contained in 1998, Greenbacks says big hair played a big part in their bromance: "Information technology was mutual admiration to begin with. Adrian sported that big hairdo that was prevalent at the fourth dimension amongst rock musicians and I had a toned-downward version. I was all over the globe on the tennis excursion in the mid-80s and Iron Maiden was constantly touring. Nosotros kept popping up in the same cities."
Jimmy Connors
Although non exactly synonymous with music, Jimmy Connors - the viii-time Chiliad Slam winner and former world No.1 - recorded an album that went quadruple platinum in 1982. To be fair, that anthology was the eponymously titled debut by Lionel Richie, merely Connors was in the mix somewhere providing backing vocals.
A friendship with the Commodores legend rather than Jimmy's vocal prowess no uncertainty brought him to the studio, and the American pro also shared BVs with famous musicians in their ain right such as Kenny Rogers and Richard Marx. A remastered version of Lionel'south debut which resurfaced in 2003 features his Endless Love duet with Diana Ross. Countless Dearest is a wonderful state of being for most and a purgatorial nightmare for whatever lawn tennis actor.
Serena Williams
Serena Williams is non so much a musical performer every bit a "personification of force" co-ordinate to megastar Beyoncé, who cast her in the video for Sorry, the kickoff standalone video from Lemonade, directed past award-winning filmmaker Kahlil Joseph.
"I have known the manager since I was, like, nine years old," Williams told Associated Printing (equally reported past ESPN). "I know Beyoncé pretty well, and then they were like, 'Nosotros would dearest for you to be in this item song. Information technology'due south about strength and it's about backbone and that'southward what nosotros come across you as."
The 23-fourth dimension Grand Slam titan was fazed more easily than one might accept expected, though she before long got the hang of being out of her comfort zone: "[Beyoncé] told me that she merely wants me to dance, like just be really free and just trip the light fantastic like nobody'south looking and go all out. Then that wasn't easy in the beginning, but and so it got easier."
Together the Single Ladies vocalist and the ladies singles legend helped make Lemonade "a cogent argument that strong and empowered women brand better societies", co-ordinate to Rolling Stone.
Daniela Hantuchova
The scientific precision of the big serve requires a similar bridge of concentration to that of a classically trained concert pianist, and having studied piano betwixt the ages of six and 14, Daniela Hantuchova is no pushover when tinkling the ivories. The Slovakian four-fourth dimension mixed doubles M Slam winner showed off her extracurricular talents at an exhibition friction match in Bratislava in 2013, stepping up to a keyboard to hammer out everything from Beethoven's Für Elise to The Beatles' Yesterday via some Richard Clayderman. Hantuchova also speaks six languages.
Yannick Noah
The men's singles champion at the 1983 French Open up, Yannick Noah is a Frenchman who proved to exist a winner both at home, so afterwards away from lawn tennis birthday. Noah's career arc has seen unprecedented success as a racket homo-turned-reggae singer, with album sales and disquisitional acclaim coming surprisingly piece of cake.
Two of Yannick's albums, Pokhara and Charango, have sold more a 1000000 copies each in France, while the song Aux arbres citoyens - an ecology call to arms from the latter album - went to No.ane for iii weeks in France and No.2 in Belgium when it was released equally a unmarried in 2006. It has racked upward nearly three million plays on YouTube later being retroactively posted in 2011.
Ilie Năstase
The fabled bad boy of lawn tennis was known as Nasty dorsum in his mid-70s heyday. The two-time Thousand Slam winner tried his hand at wooing the French public as a lounge cadger long later his playing days had come to an finish, though World Trotter Lover and the B-side Cascade Être Un Homme (To Be a Man) were released to little fanfare in 1987. The spaghetti-stringed controversialist (ask your gramps) has as well spent some time working as a pol in recent years back in his hometown of Bucharest.
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Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/64eff228-6acf-4bee-8f57-d2ce2b95d623
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