It is the football/music crossover no one knew they needed.
Indie-rock band Blossoms, curators of jingly, jangly, lovely summertime hits like “Charlemagne” and “Honey Sweet” — and Sean Dyche, Everton manager and hoarse whisperer.
Dyche inexplicably stars in the video for Blossoms’ new single, “What Can I Say After I’m Sorry?” Presumably after ‘I’m sorry’, the ginger-goateed one would say; ‘But that’s a stonewall penalty for me’.
Advertisement
Anyway, how did this happen? Well, they met at a Rick Astley gig, of course.
Why did this happen? Well, that is still unclear.
“They just said; ‘Look would you fancy it?’”, Dyche said. “Yeah, to be in a music video, how would you not fancy that when you’re a music fan? It’s a good tune as well, which is helpful. For someone who’s a big music fan and gig fan, to be asked was very pleasing.”
Yes, that is Dyche saying he is a music fan twice in the same press conference on Wednesday; it is something you will hear him say a lot if he is asked about his favourite pastime outside of football.
Dyche goes to gigs, he goes to festivals, he has famous musicians as phone contacts and he is friends with Serge Pizzorno from Kasabian.
He recently told all in an interview with Geoff Shreeves on The Overlap podcast series Football Music & Me, about his music taste and life. In it, Dyche is wonderfully Brent-ish.
“Most people probably think I am slightly different,” Dyche muses. “We get businesspeople come in (to Everton), so when they come in and see what we do, they are considerably misinformed of what they thought they are going to see and get involved with…until they come in and they say; ‘Right, there’s a lot more to what you do’, first of all professionally and probably to what they thought of me as a person.”
Dyche goes to Rock City in Nottingham a lot. It was his first-ever music venue (to see ’80s rockers Spear of Destiny) when he was a pup coming through the ranks at Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest.
He describes his music taste as eclectic. It includes Pink (“awesome”), Rihanna (“amazing”) and Kasabian (“massive fan”), as well as Inspiral Carpets, Metallica, Stereo MCs, Happy Mondays and The Stranglers. He even went to The Hacienda a few times back in the day. Sean Dyche raving his gnashers off to acid house. Let that image linger.
Advertisement
So much does Dyche — who believes in using music with players as a psychological mood-altering tool — love gigs, that he will even go on his own.
“You can float into a gig, you see,” he told Shreeves. “You float in late-ish just as it’s gonna start, float out just before the end, couple of beers, no one’s really that interested in you because they are all watching the gig.”
His favourite gig ever was Kasabian at Brixton Academy in 2012, a pick-me-up night after being sacked by Watford. “That’s top; the atmosphere, the moment, everything.”
He went straight to a gig after being sacked by Burnley, too, heading to (you guessed it) Rock City in Nottingham to take in a Manchester tribute acts night.
Dyche said his other most memorable gigs include Simply Red, “D.C. Fontaines” (he meant Fontaines D.C. but that’s OK) and The Hives at Glastonbury.
Listening to Dyche regale his favourite bands and concerts is a bit like listening to Keir Starmer talk about football; you know he is a genuine fan, it just sounds weird. “You’re learning without learning,” he said of listening to his parents play music when he was young.
And on meeting famous musicians, more Brent-isms: “They always do that weird thing where they can’t get over how much I’m asking them about them. They want to ask you about you, of course.”
The same Overlap interview also yielded an unlikely link with Green Day, whom Dyche called “terrific”, which led to frontman Billie Joe Armstrong congratulating Everton after they beat Liverpool 2-0 at Goodison Park last week.
So what about this Blossoms video? In it we see Dyche suited up in some sort of agent/boss/gangster role telling the band about a job he wants them to do.
“Listen lads, it’s really important that you know you’re the specialist group of people that I’ve pulled together to make sure we can pull this job off,” he says. “We’ve gotta get Gary.”
Advertisement
The band head off in a camper van which breaks down, so they call Dyche who looks like he is in the north west’s version of Tony Montana’s Miami mansion.
“I’m running out of patience mate,” Dyche sternly tells them, like he is telling Vitaliy Mykolenko he needs to start getting his crosses past the first man.
And do you know what? He is pretty convincing. The suit, the boss-man role, the giving out orders, you can totally see him in Guy Ritchie’s next film.
Sean Dyche. Football manager. Music video star. 🎸
The backstory of the gaffer's link-up with @BlossomsBand. 🤝 pic.twitter.com/ChrPD61CLs
— Everton (@Everton) May 1, 2024
There have been far, far worse football acting cameos. Compared to Wayne Rooney, Dyche is up there with Laurence Olivier.
“They gave me a rough feeling (of what to do in the video),” Dyche adds. “Not too much…could you wear a suit, could you turn up?”
See, he is a natural.
What next? David Moyes in a Wizkid video? Ange Postecoglou collaborating with Fred Again?
And what about Dyche, how does he take this on from here? Dychefest? Fifty-thousand bald men in tight white shirts growling their gruff approval at Green Day belting out “American Idiot”? We can but hope.
(Top photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
