Russian Hockey Meets Andrew Lloyd Webber

Today mental_floss ran an article about great sports cheers and jeers from around the world. It was a fun read, but the best part by far was a little surprise at the end, where the article's author, Hannah Keyser, covered the popular Russian hockey chant, "Shaybu, shaybu!" which translates literally to "Puck, puck!"

Keyser illuminates the popularity of the chant by informing us that in the lead-up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russian pop star Irina Allegrova orchestrated the production of a music video featuring many notable Russian hockey players singing a musical take on the popular call to icy action, and embeds the video for our viewing pleasure. What Keyser may not have been aware of, however, was the striking melodic similarity between the shaybu song's verses and the song "The Lady's Got Potential" from the movie Evita.

So moved was I by this similarity that I could not resist putting together a mash-up. My editing software kept crashing, so I didn't bother with cropping down the frames or adjusting the levels. The result is rough, but illustrates my point effectively enough.

"The Lady's Got Potential" is a four-minute-and-twenty-four-second-long wonder of musical exposition that (like the song "You Must Love Me") was not featured in the original Broadway cast recording but was added to the movie version. So now you can enjoy rugged Russian hockey players singing along to a tune that borrows heavily from a song sung by ruggedly good-looking Hollywood pretty boy Antonio Banderas in a movie starring Madonna adapted from a Broadway musical. Something tells me the machismo machine of Russian athleticism might prefer to overlook the resemblance, but that would be a pity - nothing says tough like a little Andrew Lloyd Webber!

We have to give Allegrova credit though - the "shaybu, shaybu" chorus of her song is very catchy, and, as far as we know, bears no resemblance to any number of the Broadway canon.