Big League (song)
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| "Big League" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single by Tom Cochrane & Red Rider | ||||
| from the album Victory Day | ||||
| Released | September 1988 | |||
| Genre | Pop rock, Arena Rock | |||
| Length | 4:36 | |||
| Label | Capitol | |||
| Songwriter | Tom Cochrane | |||
| Producer | Don Gehman | |||
| Tom Cochrane & Red Rider singles chronology | ||||
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| Audio | ||||
| "Big League" on YouTube | ||||
"Big League" is a song by Tom Cochrane released as the first track from the Canadian rock band Tom Cochrane & Red Rider's 1988 album Victory Day. One of the band's most successful and popular singles, the song was a charting hit in both Canada and the United States, peaking at number 4 in the Canadian RPM Hot 100 and number 9 in the American Billboard Rock Tracks chart.
In 2018, Cochrane released a new solo recording of the song as a charity single to benefit the victims and survivors of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash.
The song is told from the "voice of an anguished hockey parent from an unidentified northern town", whose son had earned a scholarship with a U.S. team before being killed when a truck travelling in the wrong lane crashed into his car.[1]
While the song is fictional, Cochrane has said it was inspired by a custodian who approached him before a show at a rink and requested Cochrane play his son's favourite song, "Boy Inside the Man" from the band's 1986 self-titled album. He noticed the man was using the past tense, and as the conversation continued, Cochrane understood that the father's son had died.[2]
The story resonated with Cochrane, who said he began to write a song that crafted a stronger hockey narrative and thematic elements of mortality around the basis of his encounter with the father. The singer spent less than half an hour forming the basic structure, which he wrote with only a tape recorder, a guitar and a notepad in a rented bungalow in Mississauga, Ontario.[2][1]