Blue Moon: Why Man City Fans Sing a 1934 Show Tune

Manchester City's anthem is a ninety-year-old American love song that was rejected three times before anyone kept the words, and it belonged to Crewe Alexandra before it belonged to City.

Who Wrote Blue Moon

Richard Rodgers wrote the music and Lorenz Hart wrote the lyrics, in 1934. It was published by Robbins Music the same year.

The tune nearly did not survive its own film career. MGM tried it three times and cut it three times.

First it was written for a Jean Harlow scene in Hollywood Party, opening with a line about the Lord not being busy up there. That never made the 1934 release.

Then Hart rewrote it for Manhattan Melodrama as "It's Just That Kind of Play," about coffee and crowded subways. Cut again.

Then it became "The Bad in Every Man," a nightclub number sung by Shirley Ross. That one made the film, and went nowhere.

Only afterward did Jack Robbins, who ran MGM's publishing arm, tell Hart the melody needed a romantic lyric and a title people would remember. Hart agreed reluctantly. That fourth version is Blue Moon.

It Became a Hit Twice

Billy Eckstine's MGM recording reached the Juke Box chart in March 1949 and peaked at 21.

The version everybody knows is the doo-wop one. The Marcels took it to number one on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart in 1961, sold a million copies and were given a gold disc.

More than sixty artists have recorded it, among them Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Django Reinhardt.

Crewe Alexandra Sang It First

Blue Moon was a Crewe Alexandra song before City took it.

City historian Gary James dates the switch precisely. He first heard City fans sing it at the opening game of the 1989-90 season, away at Liverpool. It had not been sung in previous seasons. After the match at Anfield, City supporters were held back inside the ground, and a few of them started it up as they filed out.

It caught on from there.

Why That Song, and Why Then

The timing is the whole point.

1989 City were not the City of now. The song arrived in the lean years, and a club that won things once in a blue moon had found an anthem that said so out loud. It was sung slowly and it was sung with gallows humor.

That is why it survived the trophies. The same song now goes up in celebration rather than resignation, and City have never swapped it for something triumphant. An anthem that started as a joke about failure is harder to take off a club than one written to order.

When City Fans Sing It

It is the walkout song. It plays the team onto the pitch before kickoff at the Etihad, and it goes up again in the stands through the game and after a win.

The Full Words

This post does not reproduce them, because Blue Moon is still in copyright and Rodgers and Hart's estate holds it. Licensed lyric sites carry the full text.

What is worth knowing is that the terrace version is short. City sing the opening section, not the whole standard, and the delivery is slower and heavier than any recorded version.

The FootyTracks Manchester City Songs

FootyTracks does not cover Blue Moon. It writes original songs about the club instead.

Bernardo Silva's farewell is the City song in the catalogue, Haaland's Side Quests is about the striker's routine, and the Premier League 26/27 song covers the title race. All three are in the Listen block above.