3 Levels of High School Fight Songs

Many of you reading this have probably either attended and graduated high school, or are attending high school at the moment. One of the most prevalent features of school spirit is the fight song, sometimes referred to as the school song. But let me be the first one to tell you: High School fight songs are usually pretty bad. Quality wise, they are usually unoriginal, and played by extremely amateur musicians (obviously). But, regardless of where your school is and how big it is, high schools usually use one of three different types of fight songs. I like to divide these fight songs into three categories: Originals, Original-Rewrittens, and Fillers.

First, Originals. This is probably the easiet to explain. These are fight songs that are entirely original to the high school it is used at. The quality of the song itself and lyrics can range from college quality to elementary grade level vocabulary, but many take pride in the fact that is was written especially for their school. A good example of this type of fight song is the fight song of Maine South High School, in South Park, Illinois

Next, Original-Rewrittens. These are probably one of the most common type of High School Fight Songs. The basic idea is to take a good medley, and write a whole new set of lyrics, to make it unique to the school it originates from, in a sort of way. Common college fight songs used to make these, and just used commonly in general, are the Notre Dame Victory March, On Wisconsin, Go U Northwestern, the Washington and Lee Swing, and Hail to the Victors, and more likely than not, your high school used one of these fight songs. Original rewritten, like Originals, can range in quality, from almost indistinguishable from the originals except in melody, to lyrical traffic jams. A good example of this type of fight song is Federal Way High School from Washington:

On Federal Way High
On to victory (clap, clap, clap)
Proud to fight for Blue and White 
We shout our loyalty 
Fight, fight, fight! 
Stand all you Eagles 
Raise your battle cry! 
Stand up and cheer for all to hear 
'Cause Eagles always do or die

Now, the fight song they borrowed this melody from, Go U Northwestern, from the University of Northwestern:

Go U Northwestern!

Break right through that line.

With our colors flying,

We will cheer you all the time,

U Rah! Rah!

Go!  U Northwestern!

Fight for victory,

Spread far the fame of our fair name,

Go!  Northwestern win that game.

If you notice, there is actually no similar lines of lyrics in Federal Way's fight song, but the melody stays the same. These are probably the best type of high school fight song because they use already proven melodies with unique lyrics to add a bit of a personal touch.

Finally, the lowest of the low: Filler Fight Songs. These types of fight songs are probably as common as Original-Rewrittens, unfortunately. Basically, they follow similar principles as Original-Rewrittens, but instead of changing all the lyrics, they just swap out any reference to the original school and replace it with their own. A lot of the time, these types don't even rhyme, which is even more painful. And if you want to find out if your school is guilty of using a Rewritten, just type in a couple lyrics into Google, and the original may show up. Terrebonne High School in Louisiana is a great example of both usage of the W&L Swing, a very common high school fight song, and a filler Fight song:

Oh, when the Terrebonne Tigers fall in line, 

We're gonna win that game another time. 

For THS I yell, I yell, I yell, 

And for the football team I yell, I yell, I yell. 

We're gonna fight, fight, fight, for every yard, 

We're gonna hit that line and hit it hard, 

We're gonna roll those. . . . . . on the side, on the side, 

Terrebonne High

And now, the W&L Swing:

When Washington and Lee's men fall in line,

We're going to win again another time;

For W&L I yell, I yell, I yell,

And for the University, I yell, like hell!

And we will fight! fight! fight! for every yard;

Circle the ends and hit that line right hard!

And we will roll those Wahoos on the sod!

Yes, by God! RAH! RAH! RAH!

HEY!

Besides a few word changes to fit tense and syllables, they're basically the same fight song. And even though I called out this random Louisianan school, countless other schools across the country create monstrosities like this. But is it necessarily a bad thing? If the melody is proven, and the lyrics are proven, why not just use both? Well, there isn't really a reason not to, but for the sake of creativity, it's not that hard to write new words to a fight song, I've done it countless times.

Now that I got all of that off my chest, I think that I'll start on a series about college fight songs, specifically the Power 5 Conferences: the ACC, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, and Pac-12. So be prepared.