Paris 2024: The Olympics Playlist Reflects Cultural Shifts in Sports Coverage Traditional soundtracks have given way to hip-hop and Snoop Dogg By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Tuesday, August 6, 2024 - 11:09 am
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In more than 40 years of Olympics coverage on ABC, announcer Jim McKay gifted broadcast sports many enduring phrases, none more so than the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, which was as much a part of the theme song for the network's Wide World of Sports franchise as the triumphal horn notes in the score. He combined a literary sensibility with genuine enthusiasm when he approached a microphone.
It remains to seen how Snoop Dogg, NBC's special correspondent for the Paris 2024, is remembered as a sports announcer. But he will be remembered. His play-by-play of the men's doubles badminton match between the U.S and China is the very definition of literal. But coming from the man who gave us the lyric The Lexus flexes from Long Beach to Texas in 1993's Tha Shiznit, it's his lighthearted and upbeat delivery, like McKay's authoritative and commanding tone, that makes them authentic and memorable.
Snoop is the head cheerleader in a pantheon of music stars that have been incorporated into the broadcast production of Paris 2024, a global stage for the ongoing synergy between sports and entertainment. In this, his sophomore pass at the role - his earthy description of equine dressage at the 2020 Games in Tokyo went viral - he's a quintessential torchbearer for contemporary American culture (literally as well as figuratively: he carried this year's relay flame past the Stade de France Olympic Stadium), straddling both entertainment and sports.
The Playlists The Games' Opening Ceremony had almost as much music as an evening at Lollapalooza, with nearly as much rain but far more musical diversity. Lady Gaga's performance of Mon Truc en Plumes, an homage to its writer and original performer Zizi Jeanmaire's 1961 hit version, came with a live band, unique choreography, and plenty of feathers.
If Gaga's choice saluted France's musical heritage, Aya Nakamura's mashup of her two songs Pookie and Djadja, mixing Afro-beats with a live French marching band, reflected its contemporary diversity.
A decapitated Marie Antoinette singing the introduction to the French revolutionary anthem Ah! a Ira gave way to Gojira's heavy-metal rendition (apparently, the first time a metal genre has been incorporated into an Olympics ceremony). The red mists and streamers projecting from the Conciergerie were as good as any rock-concert pyrotechnics.
There were other moments of musical synergy, such as BTS vocalist Jin as South Korea's official representative in the ceremonial torch relay. The pi ce de r sistance of the pageant, though, was certainly Celine Dion's heart-stopping performance of Edith Piaf's signature L'Hymne l'amour from the Eiffel Tower.
Performance Choices Ballplayers choose their walk-on music, and Olympic athletes make similar choices. Legendary gymnast Simone Biles picked Taylor Swift's Ready for It? and Travis Scott's Delresto (Echoes) featuring Beyonc for her workout. Jordan Chiles's floor routine is a Beyonc mashup, starting with Black Parade and segueing into My House, then Energy, and finishing with very early Beyonc : Destiny Child's Lose My Breath. Jade Carey's routines were rock-inspired, accompanied by White Stripes' hit Seven Nation Army. Brittney Spears and Madonna have also been favored by a few gymnasts this year.
Consultant Little Black Book ranked a list of music genres heard during the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony.
In many ways, the music of the Olympics' opening night was fairly conventional from a genre perspective. Spotify's Official Playlist Paris 2024 is jumbled: its top-10 list leads with Seven Nation Army and keeps rock near the top with Blur and Maneskin. Joining them are Tate McRae's hip-hoppy pop Greedy, Dua Lipa's Houdini, and, finally, the French national anthem La Marseillaise.
According to London-based advertising and marketing consultancy Little Black Book's analysis of the music heard in all four hours of the Opening Ceremony, 45 genres and subgenres were represented, led by classical (historically, the Olympics' default setting), then disco, French pop, French house, and Eurodance. The analysis includes, apparently, the commercials, as well as the interstitial underscores between events. But featured songs like L'Hymne l'amour and Mon Truc en Plumes tilt it toward a nostalgic de Gaulle-era sensibility.
See You in El Lay That, of course, makes Snoop Dogg's ubiquity all the more striking. Officially part of NBC's team reporting on the Games and onsite to deliver regular reports on the broadcaster's primetime show, he's an entertainer who has transcended music to become an interpreter.
But he's also emblematic of American music culture, which has been dominated by rap and its subsets - trap, snap, frill, Reggaeton - for much of the past 20 years. That infusion was on display in 2022 at Super Bowl LVI, where Dr. Dre, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar joined Snoop for a 50th-anniversary celebration of the genre on a stage as global as that of the Olympics.
And that ostensibly sets the stage for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, when then-56-year-old Snoop will likely get to reprise his most famous L.A.-centric lyrics, from the eponymous El Lay track:
Lakers, Dodgers, Ducks, Kings, Angels, Clippers
Real set trippers
Clarify ride, we bonafide dippers
ESPN, you know Sportscenter
Spooned and groomed, dipped and wet
Home of the NBA championship
Purple and Gold, homie let the story be told
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Paris 2024: The Olympics Playlist Reflects Cultural Shifts in Sports Coverage Traditional soundtracks have given way to hip-hop and Snoop Dogg By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
