Why do we have a rubbish National Anthem?
 

How come all these other countries have great national anthems such as;

USA The Star spangled Banner, rockets bursting in air...all that very stirring

France Le Marselies (apologies for spelling) blood of invaders spilling on to the ground...way to go

Germany German Women, German Wine, German Song...prefer red myself so I'll pass on the Reisling...:D

and what do we have? Some dreary little ditty asking some deity of middle eastern provenance to look after some unelected foriegner who's been placed in charge of us.:damn:

Now I've got some suggestions;

Jerusalem, I know this kind of negates what I said about the present National Anthem, but it's a great singalong kind of song. In fact I think the British citizenship test should be to be able to sing both verses of this, then eat a pork pie and drink two pints of bitter (possibly mild) in a half hour ladies can have lager (in half pint glasses!) anyway I digress, onwards

I vow to thee my country, I'd drop the last verse though, smacks of godbothering:-?

Rule Brittania, trouble is I think people from other countries might point at us and laugh given the current state of the navy.

Land of Hope and Glory, ditto Music far better though (IMHO).

an honourable mention goes to Billy Bragg's Between the Wars, I'll put it on the poll just in case.

Okay any other suggestions post them with comments, I'll put a don't know and I'll redo the poll if there are any other sugestions.

Mike.

Where in "God Save the Queen" is this mentioned? :-?

I think we should replace the United Kingdom's national anthem with Joe Dolce's Shaddappayourface, or possibly the Birdy Song.

Yes they're crap, but so is our national anthem, so why not? :rotfl:

Alternatively: Nothing wrong with preposterous innaccurate lyrics in an anthem, so nothing wrong with using Rule Britannia, even though we don't actually rule any waves further than about 300 yards off our beaches. After all, look at the French national anthem, bloody brilliant, very stirring stuff, but goes on about forming battallions and manning barricades etc, which is not exactly what they did in most wars, however you don't see any lyrics in their anthem mentioning dropping your rifle at the first sign of a German tank and then waiting for everyone else in Europe, Russia and America to come and rescue you while you're busy running a cafe and serving Germans cheese and wine.

So yeah, Joe Dolce, or possibly Rule Britannia.

:D Chock

Where it says "God Save the Queen"

Aha! :know:

Just for the record, that 1st and 2nd verse of that song is cleaned from the German anthem. Only the 3rd verse is accepted, and it goes like this:


Unity and Rights and Freedom
For the German Fatherland
Let us all strive for that
Brotherly with heart and hand
Unity and Rights and Freedom
Are the foundation for happiness
Bloom in the glow of happiness
Bloom German Fatherland

I don't know, my favorite anthem is still the Soviet/Russian one, and while the lyrics to it were and are utter bull***t, I just love the music. Who cares about words :p

You guys should totally use the main theme to star wars!:lol:

I gotta admit, that anthem makes one want to march.

Good one! :lol:

"always look on the bright side of life" by Monty Python would be a good anthem, wouldn't you agree?:)

Yes, a very stirring anthem :yep: I think the removed the Stalinist lyrics a few years ago.

French national anthem is damn good, too.

No, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry guys....but the Big Yin has beaten you to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odNNgEn5l6s

:arrgh!:

See? Problem solved. :up:

(Language of course.)

Luckily Hen wlad fy nhadau is a much nicer anthem than the English one.

Hating the royal family and being welsh not english GSTQ is something to be ignored, sit down for or time to go and make some coffee.

Agree though GSTQ is a depressing repetetive durge and needs changing. England should use jerusalem or something.

Land of hope and glory
End of
:rotfl:

What I found most amusing was when Russia had its new anthem and no one knew the words to it. In fact I don't think there were. So everyone sang the old one. Well the Russians I knew. Now the new old anthem no one seems to know the words to it so they sing the soviet words. :)

The theme from the Archers, natch

Exactly! I never bothered remembering the new one. Whenever I hear the anthem nowadays, I just automatically launch into singing the old words (in an obviously sarcastic fashion). I remember when one new year's, my family just randomly sang the whole Soviet thing together while the music-only (as it was at the time) anthem played, and then laughed our asses off for the next half hour about it :lol:

Assimilate the Polish national anthem, change your state flag to the Polish one too.
Half of Polands population has moved to the UK soon... :-?

D±browski's Mazurek, Poles marching and taking back what once was theirs with sabres in hand.

It's sad we have such a dull one, it gives me sad feelings!:nope:

By the way I'm Kurtz's daughter call me Emelye, Em, or Antidike ( it's greek it's pronounced Anti-deekee [Emelye in the ancient Greek times would be Emelius for a male or Emelia for a girl or spelt something like that and that means enemy and my brother couldn't find enemy in greek so he put in adversary and the rabbit just jumped straight out of the hat!])

I always liked "To be a Pilgrim" by John Bunyan, when I was at school.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_be_a_pilgrim

it was also played in 'Clockwise' - a film about an english school headmaster who goes off his nut, played by John Cleese.

Not too much about god or monarchy, or zealous patriotism, and it has the word 'hobgoblin' in it, seems like a good choice for a national anthem for England/UK to me. Plus it doesn't go on for too long, like some other indulgant national anthems I'll not mention here.... :arrgh!:

EDIT: removed hotlinked image of the first letter of the first verse.