You'll Never Walk Alone

In England, the song's most successful performance was recorded in 1963 by the Liverpudlian Merseybeat group Gerry & The Pacemaker. It quickly became the anthem of Liverpool Football Club and is invariably sung by its supporters moments before the start of each home game. The words "You'll Never Walk Alone" also feature in the club crest and on the Shankly Gate entrance to the stadium.

According to former player Tommy Smith, Gerry Marsden presented Liverpool manager Bill Shankly with a recording of his upcoming cover single during a pre-season coach trip in the summer of 1963. "Shanks was in awe of what he [had] heard. [...] Football writers from the local newspapers were travelling with our party and, thirsty for a story of any kind between games, filed copy back to their editors to the effect that we had adopted Gerry Marsden's forthcoming single as the club song".

Marsden himself told BBC Radio how, in the 1960s, the deejay at Anfield would play the top-ten commercial records in ascending order, with the number one single transmitted last, shortly before kickoff. Supporters standing on the Spion Kop terrace would sing along, but once "You'll Never Walk Alone" dropped out of the top-ten, says Marsden, they continued to sing it. The song was later adopted by the Scottish teams Hibernian and Celtic,Dutch teams Feyenoord and FC Twente, the Belgium team Club Brugge,and Japan's F.C. Tokyo.

The Pink Floyd song "Fearless", from their 1971 Meddle album, includes a recording of the Liverpool Kop singing "You'll Never Walk Alone". The recording is repeated many times during the song and appears solely as a conclusion at the end of the track.

A special recording of the song was made in solidarity with Bradford City following the Valley Parade fire in 1985, when 56 spectators died and many more were seriously injured. The song was performed by The Crowd, featuring Gerry Marsden, Paul McCartney and Rolf Harris, among others.

Some years later, after witnessing a rousing rendition of "You'll Never Walk Alone" at Anfield in 2007, the President of the Spanish Olympic Committee, Alejandro Blanco, said he felt inspired to seek lyrics to his country's wordless national anthem, the Royal March, ahead of Madrid's bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games.